


All the Seas That Bring Us Home {Revolution, season 3}

by LegendsoftheTARDIS



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: also violence but not graphically described, lookit all these traumatized and emotional children, much emote, so many feels, they are still full of love, uhhh swearing occurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 67
Words: 87,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22218916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendsoftheTARDIS/pseuds/LegendsoftheTARDIS
Summary: Hello. Here is a stupidly long fanfic no one asked for. It’s 173 pages in Word. Help.If anyone remembers the show Revolution, you may also remember how it just... ended?? With no conclusion?? Wtf was that shit. Anyway, here’s my take on how it could’ve ended. It ends happy, don’t worry. Also sappy. And silly. Because I am a sap. And because the world sucks and 14 year old me really loved this show and wanted the characters to be happy. So, if you, like me, were upset that they canceled this show with really interesting world building and great actors, I hope this alleviates some of the disappointment.Also! Some of the titles/lines are from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. There's also many a nerd reference in there, because I can.I also made a playlist! Will put at the end of the story. Just songs that reminded me of the characters/emotions they may have/ things that happened. Feel free to suggest, I love matching songs with stories/characters! There's also a poem in there that reminded me of them.Anyway, here is 7 months of me trying to translate mind images into words.P.S. I made Charlie gay, because no straight person sits like that. Technically, she is bi. Also poly. My rights, y'all.





	1. Strange Animals (Charlie)

[July 8th, 2029]

The clusters of billowing white tents and canvas lean-tos look like a herd of some strange animal. The grass waves in the wind, looking like the ocean I never saw. Everything as far as I can see is grass, or dust, or sky.

I shift my crossbow where it’s resting on my knees and do another 360-degree sweep from my lookout position atop the bluff. Looking down on the Texas Ranger’s camp, I can see in all directions. We’ve been expanding north into the Plains Nation and east into Georgia since early May, taking out Patriots wherever we find them. There are more than we’ve expected, and Miles says due to sleeper cells around the country., but Texas still outnumbers them by far. It is bloody. It is hard. But it’s better than brainwashing camps and military control.

Even California fully joined us about a month into the campaign, convinced as the Patriot’s plans quickly fell under the sheer numbers of Texas and the growing rebellion. The hardest part was persuading people who’d already been re-patriotized that these people in uniform were really wearing masks. Texas and California’s words were something, but not always enough. Most people are convinced by the hollow, dead look in the cadets’ eyes, and the tattooed numbers that follow. But still, we need more definite proof. Especially once we get closer to Washington.

It’s taking longer than I thought to get to D.C. I’m kind of used to just barging through, but first we gotta _find_ the Patriots, then scope out their weak spots, then attack, _then_ clean up the mess, _then_ make sure the town or city’s stable and won’t get sucked into a power vacuum before moving on. Who knew full out rebellion was gonna be this hard? Almost makes me miss the days when it was just us. Just kidding. As resourceful as my family is, there’s a lot of Patriots.

“We need to wipe this all out,” Miles said after our last attack and release of Wakonda, South Dakota. “If we don’t it’s just gonna grow back.” No shit. These jackasses are persistent, I’ll give them that. They’ve been hunting Mom for twenty plus years.

Mom hates it when I go on raids. I could die, get captured, etc. etc., we know. She says I don’t have to go. Well duh, but no one has to do anything. People do things and other people sit by. So I do _have_ to. I have to do something.

A tiny movement at the corner of my vision catches my attention and I am already down on the ground in a ready position when I realize that it’s just the scouting party. I can almost feel the reverberations from the thunder of the horses, even all the way up here.

I can see Jonathan, another rebel, climbing up the hill, relieving me of lookout duties for now. He offers me a wave, which I return and take one last look around. I don’t really mind lookout that much; I get some time to myself, and the view is spectacular. I raise my head to the wind and it whips my hair in my face. I look down at the horses and riders thundering into camp, the tiny people tying down tents or carrying water or talking to each other and doing whatever else we have to do to survive and maybe pull this off, try and reunite a country that hasn’t seen peace in two decades, if peace ever existed before anyway. _Maybe we’re_ all _just strange animals_.

* * * 

I jog all the way to the tent so I won’t miss anything. Things move so fast around here, and no one spends time catching you up. Miles is already inside, along with General Buchannan and a few other Rangers. (Why all the Rangers are male, no one has an answer. The one time I asked Miles, he just shrugged and replied, “Because Texas.”)

“Waverly is secure,” a Ranger is saying. “Took us barely two days. They’re getting weaker every day, sir. Reports from the east front are sayin’ that cities as far as Knox and Alma, former Monroe Republic are ours now.” He takes a proffered pencil and updates the map, detailing our rapidly expanding victories.

“Patriots are running back towards D.C.,” another Ranger continues. “It looks like they’ll make their last stand there. That’s where the president is holed up too.” We all scowl at that. We’d had him. We finally had him. And then one of the Rangers turned out to be a Patriot, and hit the Rangers as they were moving Davis, and… let’s just say we’re all still bitter about that.

“What’s left of the Georgia Federation is about ready to join us, sir.” The third Ranger pulls out a small piece of paper. “From President Cortez.” Sharon Cortez had taken over after Atlanta was destroyed. I don’t know much about her, but the traumatized people of Georgia seemed to trust her, which is either a really good sign or a really bad one. “They want revenge as much as we do.”

“Cool.” Miles nods, one hand on his sword as always. I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it. “And then we just walk into D.C.”

“Do you have something to say, Matheson?” General Buchannan turns towards Miles. Miles’ relationship with authority figures is always somewhat… strained, and General Buchannan doesn’t seem particularly keen on a stranger ordering his troops around. Even if that stranger is usually right (not that I’m ever gonna tell Miles that). Still, they tolerate and (mostly) respect each other.

“General, I know these guys. There’s no way they’ll go down this easy. They didn’t see us coming. They didn’t expect our numbers. But there’s a lot more out there. They were planning this for _months_ before the blackout. Probably years. There’s no way they’re gonna hide up in the White House and politely hand over the keys. Knowing them, they probably have some sort of horrible backup plan that involves several crimes against humanity waiting for us at the gates.”

“I mean, they already tried nukes, typhus, and mustard gas.” I chime in and tick them off on my fingers. “I don’t know what else there is to _try_ , but they will.”

“Thank you, Charlie, for reminding us of the truly horrific ways for us to die. Point is—we have to be ready. We have to be smart. These guys used to run the whole U.S. We might be bigger, but they’re meaner. Just—” Miles lets out a breath. “Don’t expect this to be over.”

“Thank you for your concern, both of you.” Buchannan somehow manages to sound serious and dismissive at the same time. He turns back to the map and starts contemplating their next strike with the Ranger officers, indicating that our presence is no longer required. “We need updates from Johnson and Smith as soon as possible. We should push farther into the ex-Republic as soon as we can, early next week….”

Me and Miles see ourselves out. We have another war meeting to attend.


	2. Nanos and Zombies and Aliens, Oh My (Aaron)

Rachel, Priscilla, and me are already in the tent. _A_ tent. We just kind of put them up at random and everyone uses what they need, because we move so often and people come in and out daily. Rachel is pacing around, regardless of the small space. She can’t seem to stop moving nowadays.

“Hey,” Charlie swings in, followed by Miles. The three of us jump, instinctively searching for danger, then a millisecond later, recognize the familiar faces and relax.

“Rangers are back. Took more of the east. And Georgia’s on our side now.” Miles updates us as he double-checks to make sure no one is lurking outside. A habit of his.

“They want to move on D.C. within a month,” Charlie continues. “We tried to warn them about the Patriots, but…” she and Miles look at each other and chorus, “Texas.”

“Okay, that’s great, what about our problem in… you know… the opposite direction?” I shift worriedly from my seat on the ground. In the dirt. As usual. _When was the last time I even sat in a real chair?_ “Taking care of the Patriots won’t matter if we can’t get the you-know-what under control.”

“Any more dreams, Pricilla?” Rachel turns to Priscilla, sitting next to me, who shakes her head.

“Nothing. I think they’re concentrated in the Wasteland now. I haven’t even seen them anywhere since…” she trails off, but we all know what she means.

“We need to know more about the Wasteland,” Charlie says, sitting down on the ground and propping up her bow to use as a headrest. “We can’t go in there blind.” We’ve been moving constantly for the past two months, just trying to keep up with the first war we’re fighting. Overthrowing a government doesn’t leave you with much time to plan.

I shake my head, thinking. “Does anyone even know _why_ it’s called the Wasteland?” We’ve gotten more and more reports about a migration to the territory. No one who’s gone has returned, but people travel there anyway. Don’t ask me why.

“No…” Miles says slowly. “We all just kinda… called it that.”

“There’s only horror stories and speculation,” Priscilla waves a hand dismissively. “Nuclear waste. The plague. Zombies. Stuff like that.”

“Area 51.” Rachel says suddenly, lifting her head. 

Silence for a moment. Then I say: “Are you _kidding_ me.”

Rachel shakes her head. “Something about whatever tests they were running… chemicals in the air and the groundwater… that combined with the nuclear meltdown in Arizona…” she stares distantly at a tent pole, trying to remember fragments of an overheard conversation over six years ago. “When Monroe—” she pauses and visibly gathers herself, and we all give her space. It is hard to talk about the past. We spend all our time trying to survive in the present that anything else feels unreal, or too real. “When I was trapped there, I remember them saying something about it… Monroe wanted to expand his territory, so he sent soldiers through the Plains… only two came back. Even he wasn’t stupid enough to try again.”

“So _we’re_ the stupid ones.” I nod. “Great. But also, I’m not going. This is ridiculous. The universe is playing one big practical joke and I will not be in on it anymore. Area 51? I mean, come on.” Charlie just raises an eyebrow at me.

“Think of it this way,” Miles reasons. “Aliens can’t be any worse than what’s happening here.”

“There—are no aliens!” I sputter. “That’s just a hoax people made up because they don’t believe in real science!” Then I realize Miles is making fun of me and sigh. “I really should be ready for that by now.”

“But why would the nanites go there?” Priscilla wonders aloud.

“No one’s there to interfere?” I speculate.

“Or hear any cries for help.” Charlie mutters.

“My best guess? There’s something there they can use. Maybe the old power plant. Maybe something else.” Rachel stares into space, looking at nothing in particular. She does this whenever she’s thinking. Gets this blank look in her eyes like she is forcing herself to think about the nanos. Which she probably is.

“Oh, goody,” Miles sighs, throwing one arm up in defeat and leaning against the tent. “Just what we need. For them to get stronger.”

“How’re we gonna stop them?” Charlie looks around, no longer relaxed. “We don’t even know what they’re _doing_.”

“Well, we can’t just skip into the Wasteland,” Miles says. “That’d be even stupider than, I dunno, walking into D.C.”

Priscilla crinkles her brow and murmurs, “One does not simply…”

“Walk into Mordor!” Me, Priscilla, and Rachel chorus together, a small, rare moment of glee passing between us. Charlie looks extremely confused and Miles just fake-coughs, “Nerds.”

“Well, we can’t wait much longer,” Rachel objects. “It’s just gonna get worse.”

“ _Wow_ Mom, _great_ pep talk.”

“Okay,” Miles interrupts. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna wait till the Rangers take D.C. Make sure the Patriots are really down. See if there’s anything they have that might be useful. Find some people we can trust to keep an eye on things while we’re gone. Head to the Wasteland.”

“…And then?” I prompt.

Miles shrugs. “I dunno. Why do you always expect me to have the plan?” Charlie, flopping back down on the ground, flips him off.

“Grandpa’s not gonna like that,” she muses, folding her arms together.

“Gene doesn’t like anything we do,” Miles makes a face.

“He doesn’t like _you_.” Charlie rolls onto an elbow while Rachel and Miles pointedly avoid looking at each other and Priscilla smiles. I don’t try and conceal my smug glee that Miles is the target.

“I’ve grown on him.” Miles seems rather proud of this fact.

“Only because he couldn’t get rid of you,” Rachel retorts, smirking.

“Well, good news for him, he can’t come anyway, so he’ll be rid of me soon.”

“He can’t come where?” Gene pushes the tent flap aside, and I jump a little. We’re all very on edge. “And we’re moving camp again soon. They want to get all the way to Ravenna in three and a half weeks. I said that’ll probably drop thirty to fifty guys or horses with heatstroke, but as usual, no one listens to a doctor. We pick up spare Rangers and destroy Patriots on the way. And,” he adds, “you’ll have time to explain to me exactly what idiotic suicide plan you have now.”

“You sure you don’t wanna just sit in blissful ignorance?” Miles asks as he holds the tent open for us all to depart. I tiredly stand and help Priscilla up. I know she’s fine, but I can’t tell if she seems off, or I’m just over-worried.

“Believe me,” Gene says. “There’s enough ignorance around lately. And we’ve never been a particularly blissful group.” 


	3. The Eagles (Charlie)

[July 10th – 11th, 2029)

You get used to being covered in dirt. We’ve been on the road (figuratively; also literally, because multiple roads are far and few between anymore) for eight days, and it shows. After days of alternate walking, riding, and sitting in wagons, you just accept that the dirt is a part of you now.

I’m currently in a wagon, because we have the room. People come and go at each inhabited stop, jumping on to the join the fight, jumping off to try and re-organize whatever town we hit last. The Patriots are fewer and fewer. They’re running, alright.

Aaron and Priscilla are in a wagon ahead of me. Miles is on a horse next to me, because he likes to be a cowboy, and Mom’s across from me. There’s fifteen Rangers and twelve rebels including us, three from to our last town: Arrowsmith, Iowa. Apparently that used to be a band that people over forty loved before the blackout.

The Patriots are mostly gone this far west, but we follow the east front’s intel and pick up any stragglers. So, Arrowsmith it is.

Ramona, a recent rebel from a few towns ago, squints at the sky next to me. “Eagle!” She points up. I follow her line of sight until I see it, a shape swooping and diving above the treeline. “Wish that was me,” she mutters, and I nod in agreement.

Mom, Aaron, and Priscilla all have the same half-grin on their faces as they say together, “The Eagles are coming!” Other people call out the same thing up and down the line. Now _that_ one sounds familiar. I think it’s from a book I read once, a long time ago, or maybe Dad read it to me when I was little… Oh, wait. Yeah, I remember. The little dudes were… um… stuck. At the top of the mountain. Except it was… exploding. Yeah, that was it. Me and Danny were so worried. So when Dad told us the eagles, we jumped up shrieking, running around in our best eagle imitation. I totally forgot about that till now.

There’s another ripple of movement from the front of the procession and we all turn expectantly towards it. People pass the news from wagon to wagon until it reaches Aaron, and he tells us, “We’re a few miles from Fort Madison. We’re stopping soon and they’re gonna attack when it gets dark.”

“I’ll go ahead.” Miles is already nudging his horse ahead. He was waiting for a chance to move. None of us can stay still for very long. I can’t remember the last time we just sat and did nothing. That’s kind of what you do, now. Don’t think, just keep moving.

My mom watches him go. See, they do this thing where one of them will look at the other, and then look away, and then the _other_ one will look, and then look away, etc. etc. I cannot believe they thought I didn’t notice. _Everyone_ noticed. Anyway. 

Fort Madison is one of the Patriots’ last strongholds. I distantly remember history class, a lifetime ago, learning about another town with the same name in Virginia, and during the Civil War, antislavers led a revolt and took the armory. I like the full circle we’re having here. We’re meeting up with another Ranger/rebel battalion, the ones who took back Waverly a few weeks ago, and Buchannan is leading his camp a few days behind us. Him and California will clean up any spots we miss.

We stop a few miles northwest from the city. The other division reaches us an hour after we make camp. You get used to the chaos too—the commotion, the orders yelled around, the sound of horses and weapons, people tripping over each other to pitch tents or sharpen weapons or make battle plans. The other group brought fifty-seven more people total, forty-two of those to fight, so everything’s even more disordered than usual. You might think that fifty-ish people isn’t enough to fight the Patriots, but we have it down to a science. A few of us sneak inside, find the Patriot’s main hideouts, meet up with any rebels, maybe plant a bomb or two. Then the rest follow, inside before you know it, like the Trojan Horse.

I am ordered by someone in Ranger gear to go and get water. I don’t particularly like being ordered around, but I head off anyway, just to get out of the way. It’s not personal. Everyone gets yelled at around here. Mom raises an eyebrow as I pass her, and I just make a face in response. I know what she’s thinking: Like these guys are intimidating in _any way_ after what we’ve faced down. We gotta listen to them for now, though.

I’m hauling six buckets back when a wagon rolls up, full of new rebels (we’re using rebels instead of recruits, 1) because no shit, the word ‘recruits’ is kind of ruined now, and 2) because it sounds cooler. The wagon nearly rolls over me and I splash some water on the ground as I leap back so I don’t become a pancake (but I keep most of it in the buckets, thankyouverymuch).

A girl about my age vaults over the side. I’m always surprised when I see people my age. I haven’t really been around anyone in a long time, and they were few and far between. “Sorry about that,” she grins. “Rangers don’t know how to drive.” The driver raises an eyebrow at her and she waves at him. Without asking, she takes two buckets from my hands. “Where’re these going? And how did you carry all six?”

“You get yelled at if you don’t go fast around here,” I say. “Also, I hate taking two trips.”

“Two trips are for losers.”

I grin at her, glad my mouth still remembers how. It’s been a while. She smiles back and without looking behind her, shouts, “Teddi! Give us a hand?”

A boy also about my age jumps down from the wagon. I see she’s made a joke, because he only has one hand. The other one just ends by his wrist (long healed) and I try not to stare.

“You know you’re not that funny, right?” Teddi huffs as he hits the ground.

“ _I_ think I’m hilarious. And she does too,” the girl turns towards me. “Right?”

“I… uh…” I’m not sure if I’d be offending him or not, but the look on his face tells me this is a long-running joke of theirs. “…if you got a free hand, you can take these two.”

The girl whoops and the Teddi chuckles, shaking his head. He picks up two buckets no problem and for some reason I’m glad I made them laugh. 

“You with the water! Over here!” A Ranger waves us towards the horses. By the time we get over there, someone else is shouting new orders.

“New… newcomers! Over here for your briefing.” General Garza is a hardass, but as far as Rangers go, he’s a decent guy. I think it’s funny that we’ve been doing this for months and no one’s been able to come up with a good name. Going with “rebels” and “resistance” just makes us sound like the people from that old movie I can barely remember. Star Wars, I think it was? Danny always liked that stuff more than me. We didn’t have the movies, but Dad would tell us the whole stories when we were bored.

“That’s our cue,” the girl straightens up from petting one of the horses, thankfully shaking me out of any more memories. “See you….”

“Charlie.” Right. Introducing yourself. That’s a thing people do.

“Charlie. I’m Alani.” She waves and jogs off with Teddi in tow. He mock-salutes and I return in kind, watching them gather with the other new rebels. They’re so…. Friendly? Casual? I used to be like that too. There’s a sudden pain in my chest and I have a sudden, deep wish that they make it out of this with their— _lightness_ — still intact. 


	4. Words Without Sound (Miles)

It’s midnight. We ride out in an hour, but it’s not like anyone’s sleeping. The scattering of clouds covers the moon, which is good for us. I’ve already double and triple and quadruple checked the horses and the weapons. So now I’m just killing time.

Charlie barely looks up from where she’s counting bolts as I go into the tent. She holds up a hand as she counts out loud: “fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.” She looks up at me. “’Sup, Miles.”

“How the hell do you think you’re gonna carry all those?” I ask.

A smile flashes across her face, brief, but it’s there. “Someone already asked me that today. You don’t even wanna know where I put the rest of these. But,” she jams most of them into the quiver, “it’s better than running out and getting shot.” I sit on an upturned crate, waiting while she packs up. “I can’t believe we’re almost to D.C.” She looks up at me, and her next question is quieter. “What do we do after?”

“Hell if I know,” I shrug. “ _We_ go back the way we came. But everyone else…? Although the way things’ve been going, we’re probably gonna have to fight another fascist regime when we get back.”

“ _If_ we get back,” Charlie pronounces, sitting back on her heels. “If we die, then we don’t have to deal with whatever jackass thinks he’s qualified to lead next.”

“Hey, _I_ make the pessimistic jokes around here.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve hung around you long, enough, what’d you expect?”

“Please don’t be anything like me. Your mom _will_ kill me.”

“Too late.” Charlie takes a seat next to me and we just sit in silence. I don’t know why, but Charlie and I always instinctively know what each other needs. Sometimes it’s tough love. Sometimes it’s the truth. Sometimes it’s just quiet company before our next death-defying trick.

She lets out a long breath, resting her hands on her knees. “I’m gonna go check everything.”

“Already did.”

“I know,” she says, already leaving and waving a hand at me without looking back. The small light from the lantern doesn’t illuminate much past the tent flap, and I can’t see her in a few seconds.

I sit for a few another minute, and then deciding there’s better things to do with my time, start ransacking whoever’s tent this is for anything useful. I find a bit of gunpowder and three matches. Mine now.

A quiet noise makes me turn around, my hand already on my sword, but it’s just Rachel. She raises her eyebrows at me and drops onto the crate. “Hey, technically, we’re all part of the same team now,” I say in response to her look. “So that means we share supplies. Or did you not hear Allen’s pep talk?” Allen is okay as far as officers go, especially cause he was one of the first Californians to back us, but he really needs to take the energy down a little.

“Just don’t get caught. They already don’t like you.”

“They’re just jealous.”

“Mhhm,” There is a smile on Rachel’s face, at the corners of her eyes. “Or because you toppled their leadership.”

“Twice.”

Our silence isn’t uncomfortable, just uncertain. Then there’s a low sound, almost like a foghorn. “That’s my cue,” I have to duck under the tentpole because some idiot doesn’t know how to put tents up. Rachel stops me before I can leave. Whenever she looks at me, I feel like I’m losing my balance. Which is definitely what you want right before a raid.

“Be careful.”

“Always.”

She gives me a look. “Take care of Charlie.”

“Always.” She and I both know I mean this one.

We stand there, her hand on my arm and my other arm half curled around her and it feels like the thousand other times we’ve done this. Standing. Waiting. I would say frozen in time, but it feels like _burning_ in time. Then footsteps rush past outside and time shatters.

I exhale, feeling like I just stood too close to the edge of a cliff. Rachel steps back and I turn, entering the different world outside the tent, dew and dark and shadows outside the circle of the lantern.


	5. New Constellations (Charlie)

Miles jogs up beside me as the crowd gathers. We wiggle our eyebrows at each other, I don’t know why we always do that. It’s like a secret handshake, but quieter. That’s how my family communicates, by making faces at each other. We all suck at talking anyway. It’s weird being around crowds. People from all over—Texas, California, the Plains, anywhere in between. It’s nice to have someone you know, though. Makes me feel less like I’ll get lost. We stick to the edges.

I’m impressed that our completely disorganized fighting force gathers so quickly. We all stand and wait, like we always do before a fight, talking nervously or anticipatorily in hushed voices, or standing still, like predator on the hunt or prey frozen in fear I’ve never been able to tell.

“Recon, to my left!” Garza points, standing on top of a wagon. “You’ll be going in first.”

“That’s me,” I say to Miles, sliding to my right. He gives me a look like “ _What the hell, Charlie? What happened to keeping an eye on you?”_ and I shrug, like _“I dunno, I wanted to get moving.”_ He knows he can’t stop me anyway.

I keep moving along the crowd until we are separated into infiltration and second wave. I bump into a familiar shoulder— “Charlie!” Alani and Teddi smile at me. I didn’t take them for fighters, but these days, who knows?

“Hey,” I say. “You guys ever done this before?”

“Once,” Teddi says, in a low voice. “That’s how I lost my hand.” He lifts up his arm. My mouth opens in shock and I stare at him for a second, but then he laughs. “Nah. This happened when I was a kid.”

“Ignore him, he likes to make jokes when he’s stressed.” Alani elbows him and he doesn’t even flinch.

“Are you sure you should be here?” Roger, one of the rebels, barely hides his scorn as he stares at Teddi’s missing hand. He’s a dick. I don’t like him.

“I can still swing a sword.” Teddi smiles tightly. Next to him, Alani stands up taller, not saying anything, just backing him up. They’ve done this before. Teddi’s used to this. His body language is telling me, _don’t make a scene, finish the conversation as quick as you can._ Thankfully, we start loading up on the wagons and horses and Roger sneers at us as he disappears to the front, because apparently, he thinks going first makes him better. I hope he gets shot. Not like life-threateningly. Just enough to teach him a lesson.

“Ignore him. He’s an ass,” I tell Teddi and Alani as we hop up. The plan is to get about two miles from Davenport, then it’s on foot the rest of the way. The second wave comes next with horses and more bodies, and the rest of camp will follow with the wagons and supplies and non-fighters.

“I’m used to it,” Teddi shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Just them.”

“It’s still not fair,” Alani grumbles, crossing her arms. “I still wanna punch all of them.”

Teddi just smiles and leans over and kisses her temple. My heart does that funny jump it does whenever I see anything soft and gentle. _How different I was only three years ago._ I can tell they’re really close friends, but Teddi’s expression kinda looks like how Miles looks at Mom. _Huh._ I file that away for future thought. And then Teddi looks at me and the weirdest thing happens: _I_ feel like that too. I lean back against the wagon and shut that feeling down right now, and we stare at the stars, waiting for the order to move out. I feel a bump against my foot and Alani is smiling at me, reaching her toes out to touch mine. Another form of silent communication, telling me, _we will have each other’s backs in this_. I move my feet towards her and Teddi, and together we look like some strange, newly-formed star. _Is this what friends do?_ I honestly can’t remember friends much past the age of eleven or twelve. Is that super lame?

The call goes out up front to move out, and the wagons jolt to a start. I raise my head and catch Miles’ eye, as he’s setting up with the second group. He lifts a hand and says without speaking, _be careful, dumbass._ Well, I don’t know what he _wants_. He can’t keep an eye on me forever. And I love that he trusts me enough to let me go. I wave back and think, _I will; you too._


	6. Bat Signals (Charlie)

We arrive like ghosts, silently, slipping around and over and below the defenses. We roll in, like the early morning fog. The Patriots are scattered thin and the ones left do not have the numbers to track us, even if they saw us.

Our allies left flags on their doors, tucked in windowsills, hiding in garden boxes. Tiny scraps of color to let us know which doors to knock on. We sneak through town to grab them before hitting the Patriot’s bases. Their main one is the old prison, where they’ve set up barracks, and a secondary location at the old fort. By the time we have all amassed, there are us twenty rebels, and twenty-seven new ones from this town. That plus the thirty riding towards town right now give us seventy-seven, so suck it Patriots.

Fifteen of us are crouched on a roof of an abandoned house on the northeast edge of town and I think this is how Batman feels. Danny would love this, playing hero like in the old comics. Except this doesn’t feel as heroic. Maybe the superheroes didn’t either. The town is pitch-black but it’s almost three in the morning so we can see vague outlines. So far, no one’s noticed us. I can’t see the rest of our group out there, but I know they’re waiting for us to give the signal.

Everything is too still and I’m suspicious. It’s not like the Patriots don’t know we’re making our way towards D.C. We all agreed to watch out for traps of any kind. The rebels from town didn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The plan is for us to cause some sort of commotion at the old fort. That’ll draw the Patriots from the prison, and while they’re here dealing with our uprising, Miles’ group will infiltrate the prison. We gotta get the prison cause that’s where they’ll have all the good stuff. Of course, nothing ever goes this smoothly for us, but that’s the plan.

I can just see the prison over the trees, a few miles away. I can’t see the second wave group, but I know they are making their way through the nearby park. Our group slides down the roof and into silent streets towards the old fort. The other two recon groups are coming from the west side. Alani and Teddi are with me, and so are a few other faces I recognize. Ramona is here, and so are Carter, Delaney, and Hayden. People go in and out so fast, but a few have stuck around long enough that I feel like I’m starting to know them and not just recognize their faces.

The streets feel so wide here. I look for eyes in every window, even though this part of town is mostly deserted. I don’t like being so out in the open. Goddamn suburbanites. I can smell the Mississippi River before we see it. It’s huge, probably three-quarters of a mile across. We pick another spot on the other side of the train tracks and wait for the other squadrons. I didn’t realize how much roof-climbing was involved in a revolution, but here we are.

Alani clambers up behind me, and Teddi follows. He climbs things really well for only having one hand. Across the tracks, I can see the old fort. There’s more building with new wood, which mean the Patriots spend precious resources and time adding on to it.

“There’s about twenty to twenty-five Patriots in there,” Evan, a rebel as of an hour ago, says in a low voice. “Last count, there were ninety-six here total. The rest are at the prison, except for the fifteen out on watch.” _Why so many?_ I wonder. Not that ninety-six is a lot, but for this town and the Patriot’s situation, it is.

“Everyone clear on the plan?” Hayden asks. We all nod. Get in there and raise hell. Born and raised in Texas with a Ranger for a dad, Allen trusted her to head our mission. Cause we have missions now. We sit in the pre-dawn quiet for a few minutes, keeping an eye out for any movement. Behind me, Teddi is still, and I can feel Alani practically vibrating with energy. I see them make some sort of hand signals at each other and I wonder what it means, but I don’t have time to ask.

“There!” Ramona points. By the train station. Someone is waving, concealed in the shadow of one of the arches.

“Alright, here we go.” Harley already has one leg over the side of the roof.

We race across the train tracks and across the grass. The other group converges with us as we skid to a stop in front of the solid, fifteen-foot tall wooden posts that serve as a wall. Not that that stops us. Hayden and Tom, another newly-inaugurated rebel, lead us to a shorter building closer to the river. According to the residents of Fort Madison, this is a blind spot because you can’t see the corner of this building from the watchtower. We form a line and basically launch each other over, boosting each other up until we can scramble over the top. As soon as we’re inside, we split into our smaller groups of and make our way around, surrounding the fort.

I duck behind the wall of a set of barracks on the east side with a view of the river. The reflection of the moon is almost gone, and I know we only have two hours, tops, before sunrise. “Ready?” Carter breathes, waiting for Hayden’s signal. She said we’d “know it when we see it.”

I draw an arrow from my quiver and look around. Teddi shuffles a strange, curved sword in his hand and Alani holds two long knives. My brain decides to make the unhelpful comment that they’re both very cute when they’re holding weapons. I tell it to shut the hell up and also, _what!_? Then we hear a small crash and a big whoosh as one of the west buildings goes up in flames.

“Cue?” Ryan smiles wryly. 

“Cue.” Gracie affirms, nodding. And then we’re off.

I don’t remember most of it, just running and shooting and ducking as shots are fired, familiar faces rushing past me, Delaney and I teaming up to take out two before we split again. Something booms again and the tallest newest watchtower becomes kindling.

I see the vague shape of Hayden drop down from a balcony. I guess that’s our signal. She whistles piercingly. “Regroup! Take down the walls if you can so we have a better view! Blow up whatever you can’t break! And get ready for incoming!” The prison is only two miles from here, so it won’t take the Patriots long to get here. I silently wish Miles and the others good luck before running towards the flames.


	7. Not My Blood (Miles)

Something is wrong. Which is just typical. The Patriots haven’t left the prison yet. They’re running towards it. So…. What’s in there that’s more important than the town?

Next to me, Garza swears. “What the—doesn’t matter. We gotta get in there anyway.”

“There’s almost _one hundred_ Patriots in this town,” Charles, one of the residents says.

“And nobody ever thought to ask what’s so important that there’s that many?” I ask, mostly to myself, cause no one listens to me anyway.

“Listen up!” Garza whisper-shouts. We’re hiding in the underbrush a few hundred yards away. “We’re gonna split into two groups—one takes the north, one south. Go in the sides. Take out as many as you can. We’ll meet in the middle. Matheson, you and Sean take fifteen and lead the east. Rest of you, follow me.”

Sean’s from Fort Madison, and he seems cool. We nod at each other as we get into position. Roger glares at me and I know he’s jealous that Garza didn’t tell him to lead, because this is definitely a popularity contest right now. Roger’s an ass. And I saw Charlie glaring at him earlier so I’m obligated to hate him even more now.

“Of course we have to raid a supermax,” I mutter to Sean as we half-slide down the incline.

He laughs faintly. “I’ve heard you’ve done worse.”

I shrug. “Never said I _couldn’t_ do it.” Although when I look at the nearly-sixty-foot-tall building, even I admit it’ll be a hell of a feat to pull off.

* * *

Yep. There’s definitely blood in my mouth. And it’s not mine. Oh well.

We’ve carved a path from the east side towards the middle, but they just. Keep. Coming. Also, the Iowa State Penitentiary is creepy as all hell. Just putting that out there. If I believed in ghosts, I would bet I just walked through a lot of them. Hope they’re not too pissed off we’re wrecking their home.

I dive into an alcove and reload. Gunfire is going off on all floors of the building, ricocheting off stone and sending dust flying and whizzing past my head. Our fifteen are all still active, with a few minor wounds. I hope the other side is doing as well.

Sean takes a shot from a few doors behind me and I hear a yell. I stick my head into the corridor. Clear. We continue down hallways and up stairwells and _jesus this place is a maze._

“How many do you think are left?” Noah, from California, asks quietly. He can’t be more than twenty or twenty-one.

I’m stopped from replying cause when we turn a corner, I’m looking straight down the barrel of a gun. “…At least ten,” I say, survival counting how many are aiming at us before my mind catches up.

There’s always a moment in between fight or flight, when you can feel every muscle in your body get ready. I swear I can hear it too, like pressure building in my ears until it all comes crashing down. Except the shots I hear don’t come from where I expect.

We take advantage of the Patriot’s momentary confusion to throw ourselves back into the other hallway and against the wall. I catch myself thinking about Bas, because he would know how to get out of this… but I stop, because that’s never a good rabbit hole to fall in to. The front windows shatter and one of the Patriots yells and several of them fall. Far to my right, there’s a loud explosion and I can feel the heat from here. We spring out and finish off the rest and when I look out the window, I see Charlie sprinting towards me.

“They went the wrong way!” she yells.

“Yeah, I can see that!”

The other rebels pour out of the trees, and by the time the Patriots figure out who’s where and regroup, we’ve got most of them. Ha ha. That’s what you get for having a super confusing base.

Hayden salutes us as we walk or limp or fall down the main stairs. She’s a weird one, but she’s good at what she does. “Long time no see.”

“I guess we should’ve expected that they’d rather defend their weapons than the town,” Garza says dryly, coming down the stairs. “Found a whole load of guns, explosives, diamond chips, you name it. Best guess is they were using the river for transport. From here to the Plains.”

Charlie trots up, along with two other kids who look about her age. “Survivors are secure.” She’s smudged with soot and breathing a little heavily, but otherwise, she’s fine. She nods at me. “Guess we saved your asses.”

“Keep tellin’ yourself that.”

“Send the runners out.” Garza sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, then spits on the ground. “Bad idea.” Two people break from our group and sprint towards the town, where the rest of the camp should be arriving soon.

“Now what?” Sean looks a little stunned still. He did good for his first raid.

“Now,” Garza turns and marches up the stairs, waving at us to follow. “We get their toys.”

* * *

Their armory is an _armory_. Garza orders a couple of Rangers to safeguard the stash till the wagons get here. I wander around the entire basement of the prison, checking for any other exits in case anyone got past us. It’s cool in here. Quiet. Charlie and the others check the desks scattered around the room. Looks like this was their meeting room too. I hear something crack and the kid who’s with Charlie looks at a broken piece of wood in his hand.

“So… that’s a secret drawer,” he nods. “Cool. Definitely meant to do that.” I see a smile flash over Charlie’s face.

The girl with him bends down and rummages through it. “Uhhh,” she stands and says loudly. “This important?” She waves a map in one hand.

We all crowd to look. “It’s Fort Madison,” Charlie says, frowning slightly as she looks at me. “But what’re those x’s by the main road…”

Garza yells a question at us but we’re already halfway up the steps, sprinting towards the coming caravans.


	8. Hold on to Something (Rachel)

The sun is rising in our faces as we make our way to the town. Dad’s next to me, and Aaron and Priscilla are closer to the back of the procession. The outer edges of town are falling apart, looted and smashed into disrepair. Everyone’s moved closer together, past the fields, clustered together for safety.

The wagons move fast, but not fast enough. Dad looks over at me and says, “They’re fine. They can handle themselves.” I nod because I know they can, but that doesn’t stop the fear. There were explosions earlier, but Alyssa, Hayden’s partner, reassured me with a wink, saying “That’s just Hayden.”

We pass an old school and the old hospital, and across the fields, I can see the town. We pick up the pace a little; we want to meet the rest of our group together in the center of town before Allen explains to everyone what’s going on. But then something catches my eye. I squint into the rising sun. _Is that…?_

“Charlie?” Dad shades his eyes from the sun. “What in the hell is she doing…?”

She’s on top of an old building, and I can just see her over the newer gate with the American flag hanging on the side. She’s waving frantically and yelling, but we’re a quarter mile away and too far away to hear. I _can_ , however, see her throw up her hands in aggravation and I know I know she’s got her “you’re so stupid” expression on.

Allen rides up beside us, slowing down the caravan a little. “That your daughter?” I nod. “What’s she doing?”

Charlie yells something and I still can’t hear but I can sense the panic in her voice and the fear in her posture. She points down in front of us. I can feel everything in my line of sight get sharper as my body recognizes (“ _finally_ , Mom!”) we’re in danger. Then I see it, the dug-up patches of dirt and the strange mounds on the grass, and I swear at myself for not seeing it sooner. “Stop,” I breathe out, still processing what I’m seeing, and then turning around, I yell “STOP!”. The wagons stop short, and the horses prance backwards, already picking up on it.

Land mines. Somehow, the Patriots planted land mines.

Allen just stares for a moment. “Jesus,” he mutters. “When the hell did they even have time to do that? And what if a civilian went out this way?” We all know that’s a rhetorical question.

Ahead, I can see Charlie slump in relief. She starts making her way down the side of the building and I’m trying to figure out the next best route to take and how to disarm the mines when I hear gunshots. Charlie disappears and for a moment, I can’t breathe, but then I see she’s just slid the rest of the way to the bottom. Miles darts out from behind the building as we all duck towards the trees for cover.

“Find those Patriots!” Allen yells to our snipers. They assemble their weapons with incredible speed and sight them in the windows of a different building.

We’re too exposed out here. _Why did we take the main road again? Right, to show the townspeople that we’re not coming out of the trees like raiders._ _Damn it. Well, it was a good idea until now._

Charlie and Miles have been joined by a handful of others, but they don’t have clear shots at the Patriots. I don’t see any other Patriots though, so these must just be whoever’s left.

All of a sudden, Charlie breaks for an opening between the buildings. She dives behind an empty trucking transport crate and one of the Patriots tumbles out the window. She got him. I can also see Miles, his expression mirroring my own, which is _Charlie, what the fuck?_

She just gives him a thumbs up and ducks for cover again. The others use her cover fire to change positions and take out another one, and the snipers over here get two more. That leaves one. He ducked behind the wall, out of the way of the window. The silence is unnerving and I can feel everyone around me, hunkered down, waiting for movement.

All of a sudden something flies out the window. A table? A filing cabinet? And then I realize it doesn’t matter what it is, only what it’s doing. But by the time I realize that, it hits the ground a few hundred yards in front of us, and the brightness of the sun is overwhelmed by a roar of blistering flames.

* * *

It can’t be more than twenty seconds later, but it feels like ten years. I’ve ended up curled on the forest floor, hands over my ears. Ash and burned leaves fall around us, and I throw myself to my feet. I can’t see anything. Too much smoke. I try to run forward but Alyssa dives for my feet.

“Stop!” Her voice is muffled, and my ears are ringing. “Might be more.”

I mostly ignore her and run instead for the edge of the field. The sun filters through the grayness and I can start to make out shapes but I can’t even tell where the buildings are. I look around frantically, panic clawing at my legs and threatening to collapse them. I can’t breathe. I can’t see… I need to get across…

I feel something on the back of my neck, and I whip around, but it’s just the wind. It scatters the soot and lifts it into the air, where it dissipates like mist. The sun. It sends a sharp pain into my eyes and my head but I don’t care, because I can see Miles across the field, supporting Charlie, and they half-run, half-fall out of the smoke and onto the still-dewy grass, because somehow it’s only been two minutes. I don’t remember getting over there but there they are, Miles helping Charlie to the ground and taking a seat beside her. I slide to a stop next to them. Charlie grins up at me, looking a little dazed from the blast. “I think we got ‘em all.”

“Hi Rachel,” Miles coughs the words. “As you can see, Charlie is alive.”

“Technically,” Charlie raises a hand. “I didn’t get hurt during the actual fighting.”

“Don’t even…” I give up trying to chastise either of them because it never works anyway. “Let me see your leg.” It looks like shrapnel hit her. It’s long and deep but not close to the bone.

“Charlie!” Two kids drop down next to us, and Charlie twists around to look at them which isn’t very helpful to my bandaging.

“That was so badass,” the girl’s voice is awestruck.

“And,” the boy adds. “You didn’t die.”

“Always a plus.” Charlie hisses as she tries to sit up.

“Stop moving.” The girl pushes her back. Charlie rolls her eyes but actually complies.

“Thanks,” I say, studying them out of the corner of my eye as I bandage my daughter up for the millionth time. “Done.” I sit back onto my heels as the rest of the camp comes cautiously but quickly around the edge of the field, and Garza sprints up from the direction of the town, followed by a few others. He pauses and surveys the damage, and I can tell he wasn’t expecting this either.

“It’s a good thing you two are faster than the rest of us,” is all he says, shaking his head.

“Are there any Patriots still alive so I can hit them?” Hayden demands, swinging a short metal pole she picked up somewhere.

“Slow down, trigger finger,” Garza blocks her path with his arm. “There could be more.”

“Nah,” Aaron shakes his head, jumping down from a wagon. “They put them all so close that one would’ve triggered the rest. Anything left is just a dud. Thanks for that, Charlie.” She smirks at him as the other two kids help her up.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Miles grunts, staggering to his feet. Relief comes rushing in as we all stand, and I offer Miles my shoulder. He leans on me, even though I’m fairly certain he doesn’t need it. That relief runs through my fingers and I grip his arm, and I can feel his fingers grasp the back of my jacket. It’s good to hold on to something.


	9. History (in) (Record)s Time (Charlie)

[July 13th-26th, 2029]

We make it to Winchester, Virginia in two weeks, which I think is some sort of record. Although there’s less to do, with the other Ranger/California troops around the country and Georgia coming up for us. The Patriots are pretty much all backed in one spot. Woohoo.

I was on bed – or wagon—rest for a week of that. After a week I tried to roll of the wagon while no one was looking, so they figured it was just best to let me go.

The only good thing was that I got to spend more time with Alani and Teddi. I’m still not entirely sure how friends work, but I think it’s like this. You fight together, almost get blown up, and then you hang out after that.

I learn that Alani is half-Native Hawaiian on her dad’s side. Her parents (are? were?) a botanist and a geologist, and they met doing research in Hawaii. Her mom was on Kaua’i when the power went out. Alani doesn’t falter when she’s saying that, but her voice changes, like she’s trying to say it as fast and as light as she can. Her dad hasn’t given up hope though. He’s back in California, waiting every day. He’s also partially deaf, and that’s what she and Teddi were communicating in during the raid—sign language. They teach me a combination of American and Hawaiian sign language, and by the end of the week, I’ve got the basics down.

Teddi got his katana—his sword— from his mother. Who got it from her father, who got it from his father, you get the picture. Teddi’s great-grandfather was Japanese, and Teddi said _his_ father had it made before his family emigrated to California before World War II, because he always was fascinated by the legends and history of feudal Japan. Teddi’s great-grandmother fled from Italy to the US during Mussolini’s rule, and he thinks she would probably march up to the Patriots and beat the shit out of them with her cane while cursing them out in Italian and English. He tells me about Ireland, where his grandmother was from, and all of the pictures she showed him, and how incredibly, incomprehensibly, indescribably green everything is, unlike our current surroundings. “Your DNA’s been more places than I have ever,” I said, and he laughed, I remember, because he looked so much like the light that illuminated him from behind. I think I learned more history in that week than I ever did in school. I remember I really liked history. No teacher could get me to read an old book by some dead guy in school (reading, I learn, was more Teddi’s thing—back home, he has a book collection hiding under his bed so no one steals them for kindling), but I think I’ve always wanted to know what happened before, even before the blackout. Teddi can’t look at us when he talks about his parents, so I assume they’re dead. That breaks my heart more than usual for some reason, even though at least half of everyone left is orphaned.

He tells me how he lost his hand—two years after the blackout in a farming accident. He was too little to be using the hand-crank machine, but there was no one else. It got stuck. He tried to fix it. They almost couldn’t stop the bleeding or the infection but somehow, he pulled through. I reach out before my brain thinks to ask if that’s okay, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I ask if he can feel it, if it hurts, and he says no, but then why does his voice go quiet and his breathing falter anyway?

Teddi and Alani known each other their whole lives, grew up in the same town, faced the same weird looks from white kids, until the blackout when people seemed to stop caring about your skin color. We talked about how weird it was, what people left behind. Not that it was a bad thing. How things change, but they don’t.

I think it’s funny that they tell me all this. They _need_ me to know about their family. Where they came from. This is what’s important to them. Remembering, so it makes it seem more real instead of something lost. It’s funny because I usually try to _not_ tell people about my family. They don’t ask me or push me to tell them anything in return, but I do. And I still don’t know why, because it’s not like I like sharing my traumatic life story with people even if I could talk about it to everyone without putting my family in danger. Maybe it’s because they shared with me and I feel like I owe them something in return. Maybe it’s because I finally feel like this three-year madness could be coming to an end. (Has it really been three years? Has it _only_ been three years?) Maybe it’s just cause I want someone to talk to.

So I tell them about Danny. I tell them about how we know Monroe. I tell them about fighting the Patriots. I tell them about Mom and Miles, and they don’t get weird or anything. I leave out some stuff, of course. _I_ still don’t even know how to explain the nanites. But I tell them why we’ve been running for over two years, why we were hunted like traitors, why Miles has so many scars, how Aaron always gets nervous when people act out of character. I tell them about Jason. I tell them about Dad and Nora. Once I start talking it seems like I could go on forever, but I rein myself in cause I don’t want to scare them.

I guess friendship is being able to share all the dark stuff, and not running away? I don’t know. All I know is that by the end of the two weeks, I feel like I’ve known them for years. I mean, time moves differently in a world with no clocks, but I can’t remember the last time I felt this unguarded around someone, and I have no idea why. I think I spent so long on my own, or hiding from people, that I forgot how to be with them. One-night stands don’t really count.

We talk about stupid stuff too, like the worst wounds we ever got (totally normal stuff), our favorite things from pre-blackout, anything we can remember, which is really not much. Songs, jokes, names of TV shows. What we wanted to be when we were kids. Alani wanted to discover new species. Teddi wanted to play guitar and learn rock climbing. I wanted to be an astronaut for a little while. And it’s fun. I forgot about fun.

One time, when we’re stopped, Teddi and Miles sword-fight for our entertainment (aka because me and Alani wouldn’t shut up until they did). Hey, it’s not every day you meet someone who’s good with a sword. Most people use guns.

Teddi is good. Real good. He keeps up with Miles and their swords don’t match at all but somehow, they make it looks like they’ve been sparring for years. Miles finally knocks Teddi on the ground, but gives him a hand up (haha, get it? A hand up) and he looks almost impressed, which is a lot coming from Miles. I’m catch myself staring at Teddi, how he moves so gracefully, and Alani spots me and winks, but are her cheeks red too?

Somehow, we have almost no incidents. Two of the rebels get in a fistfight over something, but Allen breaks it up. We skirt around the northeastern side of the Allegheny Mountains, and a band of raiders try and attack our scouting party, but we easily whoop their asses. One day, we’re navigating around a ridge, when the rocks slide and one of the horses tumbles down a small slope. Thankfully, no one was riding just then. The horse rolls to a stop by a boulder on the rim of the edge, but it’s terrified and neighing and it looks like it can’t get up.

One of the Rangers sighs in annoyance, pulling his gun out. “Leg’s probably broken. Gonna have to shoot the damn thing. Slow us down.”

Alani screeches “No!” so loud we all jump, and darts through the crowd. She skids down the short but steep slope and I find myself leaning forward, Teddi pushing through to kneel beside me. _What if she falls?_ She reaches the horse and barely misses its kicking legs. I flinch and Teddi looks pale. I have the sudden urge to grab his hand but I don’t, unsure how he’d take that. The Ranger grunts in anger and looks like he’s gonna try his aim anyway, but Mom moves in front of him.

“Don’t,” she says, in that light tone of hers. The scary one, when you know she’s not messing around. He doesn’t. _Good move._ Mom nods at Alani, like she’s giving her the go signal. Alani nods back, and I can see in the set of her chin that she would’ve gone on regardless of whether or not Mom stepped in.

I can’t hear what Alani’s saying, but she manages to calm the horse and gradually it’s breathing and movement slow. Next to me, Teddi keeps up a running commentary, which helps the both of us. “She loves animals. I mean, loves them. She was vegetarian before the blackout. Still would be, but her dad finally convinced her she couldn’t survive like that now. She was basically the vet back home. No training, but she never gave up on anything. Even when people said it was unsavable.” There’s a smile inside me, hearing the affection in his voice. We watch Alani back up slowly and go around the horse, checking it for broken bones. Then she edges around to the drop side of the slope and kind of nudges the horse. It rocks back and forth until it rolls onto its feet, shaking its head and stepping nervously. She grins at us and throws a fists in the air.

We all want to cheer, then simultaneously remember that spooking the horse right now is probably not a good idea. So instead, we all shuffle around to make a path for her and watch anxiously as she leads the horse up the rise, both of them slipping on loose rocks and dirt but steadily climbing. We all reach for her as she nears the top and pull her and the horse over. I feel myself start to breathe again. People clap Alani on the back and we’re all relieved and proud, I think. Mom squeezes her shoulder and smiles. Teddi touches his forehead against hers and his gentle smile makes me feel even more wobbly than from nerves. Alani looks over at me and I shake my head at her. _Don’t ever do that to me again_. She laughs and blows a kiss my way, and then my heart flips and this time it’s not from adrenaline. The horse just shakes its mane and whinnies at us, like _what’re you looking at?_ I almost flip it off but then remember it’s a horse. Hey, _you_ try travelling constantly for months and see where your mind’s at. 

We get to Winchester in the middle of the day and pull up in the Old Town. The road is cobbled and bricked, and the houses are quaint and old-timey looking, and you can almost see the brighter colors they used to be. It all feels very colonial, which I guess is appropriate except this time the Patriots are the bad guys. It almost feels like a parade, because everyone pops out of their houses or waves at us from hastily-made camps. Alani smiles broadly and waves, and Teddi just looks at her, something like affectionate astonishment in the curve of his mouth. I’ve never met anyone—either of them—who make things this fun. As for me? Again, not used to big crowds period, let alone big crowds welcoming us, so this is a new experience.

Allen tell us to make camp wherever we can find, with the other rebels/ Texans/ Californians/ Georgians, or find a house to stay in. I’m surprised that people willingly let other people into their houses and trust them enough to not steal or like, murder. Half the fight wasn’t the Patriots, but getting people to trust each other. I expected more resistance, but I guess a common enemy unites people faster than I thought. I want it to last. This is a weird feeling going around. I’d call it ‘desperate hope’ or maybe ‘stupid hope,’ but hope nonetheless. Did people really forget all the bad stuff we did to each other? Or are they just willing to take a chance that we really are all here for the same reason?

There’s a slight commotion and the crowd parts for a tiny woman. People move out of the way for her, which is good, because I can tell just from her walk that she doesn’t take shit from anyone. She halts in front of Garza and reaches out a hand. “President Cortez. General Garza, I presume?”

He returns the handshake. “President Cortez. Good to finally meet you. Thank you for joining us.”

She barely reaches his shoulder in height but there’s something commanding in her stature. I think even Monroe and Neville would be intimidated by her. I like her already.

By the time everyone is more or less settled, it’s night. We leave tomorrow for D.C., where we’ll meet up with the other forces sweeping through the U.S. Then, we’ll give the Patriots twenty-four hours to surrender. Then, we’ll attack.

Dawn brings the sound of three hundred people all grudgingly rolling out of bed. I glance around, automatically checking for everyone. There’s Mom and Miles. Aaron and Priscilla. Hayden and Alyssa over by the tree. Ramona’s already packing up her bedroll. Carter, Ryan, Gracie, and Delaney are here too. Garza told us to just stick with our squadrons, so we have some fighting experience together, and it’s easier to keep an eye on everyone. And… there’s Teddi and Alani. Teddi hasn’t moved but he’s wide awake already, and Alani just blinks blearily. We all slept sprawled on the ground next to each other. It was the closest I’ve slept to anyone in a while. Which honestly, says a lot about the state of humanity in general right now.

The way we all move around each other almost feels like some sort of incredibly complicated dance, like some symbiotic organism (Alani remembers the most science out of all of us, as she proved on the way here, and now it keeps getting stuck in my head, like all these memories want to come out.). People pack up, people prepare, people organize, people ready the horses and wagons, people move and dart between other people and throw things at each other and by nine-ish (again, no clocks), we are ready to go.

By some miracle we do eighteen hours of the twenty-four-hour trip, stopping only after it gets too dark to see. We all basically collapse and sleep wherever we fall down, huddled together for warmth because blankets were an extra weight and space. I wake five minutes before the morning call (I know because I can see Garza talking to Miles but I’m pretending not to move so he thinks I’m still asleep and doesn’t ask me to do anything), and I find Alani’s curled up closer to me in the middle of the night, and Teddi’s on my other side. I’m warm even though I can feel the chill on my feet. At first, I kind of freeze up, but then I can feel both of them breathing and its calming somehow, and we stay that way until the call.

We’re off just after dawn and although we’re all sore as hell, the last five hours seem like nothing in comparison. Maybe that was their plan all along. I wouldn’t put it past them.

When we’re about a mile away from camp, which is about two-and-a-half miles northwest of the capital, a group of us ride and walk out in front of our convoy as we approach D.C. Through the woods and up a hill, and as we get out of the trees, I stop short.

It’s an army. Camps for miles. I didn’t realize just how many people we had, I know it’s most of the U.S. at this point, but seeing it is a different matter altogether. Part of me still automatically wants to run, because most organized fighting forces just wanted to kill us. But this—this is our army. I’m part of an army now. _How did the Patriots ever take over again? Right, because they lied and killed and poisoned and brainwashed._

Alani actually gasps as she bounds up beside me. “Damn.”

“Language.” Teddi says, coming up on her right. She flips him off.

For the first time, I think we have a chance. But we did take down one of the Patriot’s main operations with ten people, so I wouldn’t bet against us either way.


	10. Decisions (Miles)

We are two and a half miles from D.C and everyone is losing it. More people arrive every hour in small squadrons or larger cavalries. They all smell the change in power, because there’s warlords and governors and who knows what else. Allied for now, at least. This is more chaotic than the Monroe republic ever was, but it’s also, you know, less murder.  
  
To be honest I’m amazed we got this many people. I’m estimating almost a thousand once everyone gets here. Frankly, I wasn’t sure there were a thousand people left in the whole country.  
  
That’s good for us though; we can surround the city. Our best guesses put Patriot numbers at eight hundred, tops. Good for us. But they definitely have more guns. And probably bombs. And gas. And a defendable city. Bad for us.

  
I want to send in a hundred or so like we did last time. Take out a few. Destabilize their plans. In my experience, guerilla warfare tends to work the best when fighting corrupt governments. But noooo, Buchannan wants a straight-up fight, like we’re the goddamn knights of the round table besieging a castle. To psych out the Patriots or something. So. We’re circling the city like vultures, which I have to admit, is a cool image. But I still think it’s a bad idea.

  
“Hey.” Rachel comes up behind me and stands next to me, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder but only because she’s shorter. “You ready?” _She_ looks ready. She has that look in her eyes, like she’s about to run a marathon or something equally hard, but she’s gonna sprint right at it and kick it down.  
  
I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”  
  
“What comes after?” She looks around at the absolute commotion of camp, buzzing with an energy I haven’t felt since... well, since we had electric energy.  
“No idea. Hopefully, we choose someone to lead. I like Cortez. Someone needs to take care of the east coast, anyway. Texas or California aren’t gonna give up their territory, but Georgia’s the closest. Or maybe they’ll elect someone new. No one’s dumb enough to think it’ll be _the_ United States. But it’ll be something.”  
  
“Mmm.” Rachel is a woman of few words, except when she’s angry or has something to say. Other than that, she’s listening. She’s paying attention to everything. We just stand and watch for a few minutes, and then she says abruptly, “Did you see Charlie’s friends?”

  
“Yeah.” I nod. “People her own age. And for once, I don’t wanna punch them. She has terrible taste in guys, by the way. Think she got that from you.”

Rachel scoffs and crosses her arms. “That makes you lucky then. You fought next to them. Any other helpful insights?”

  
  
I tilt my head, thinking. “They’re good kids. Not bad in a fight. Not crazy or have psycho parents. I dunno. You worried?”

Rachel shakes her head slowly. “I think she’s making better decisions than we were at her age.”

That surprises a laugh out of me. “Thank god.”

I should have known better than to say that, cause a minute later, one of Georgia’s sergeants runs up to us. “Matheson. President Cortez wants to see you.”


	11. Enemy of My Enemy (Rachel)

I have to keep myself from laughing at the expression on Mile’s face. He looks like a kid who’s been called to the principal’s office. From my limited knowledge, Sharon Cortez has that effect on people.

Miles heads towards the general tent, where the officers meet and plan and who knows what else. I cross my arms and look around for Charlie. I want to ask her about her friends, but I’m not sure how. I wonder if she had any friends back in Chicago. I wonder if she thinks about her friends from elementary school. I wish I could remember their names.

I remember before the blackout, I wanted something different. _Of course_ I loved Danny and Charlie. More than my own life, if it came to that. And I loved Ben, I still do, but he was my friend and my research partner first. Our relationship—it didn’t remind me that I was alive. I wanted out—of marriage, of expectations, of the things that I was expected to do or say or be as a wife or a mother or a woman trying to make it in an engineering field. I felt trapped, like all the choices I made let me into some tiny box instead of out to the world. I don’t even know what I _wanted_. I just acted. And I still don’t know if I would take it back, if I had the chance.

Guilt combined with grief rises within me, and I think of the daily million things I wish I could’ve done better. Right now, the one at the forefront of my mind is see Charlie grow up. I did what I did so she _could_ grow up, and they came for her and Danny and Ben anyway. And then I turn away from those thoughts, because I don’t have the space right now to think about all of that. Maybe someday. Maybe never. For now, I’ll just keep repressing it like everyone else on this goddamn planet.

I re-focus on the camp. _The people here. think about them_. Movement at the corner of my eye catches my attention and I see Miles stride forcefully out of the general tent, followed by someone I hoped I’d never see again.

Monroe.

* * *

Every time I see him, I want to kill him. Which is why I’m holding my hands at my sides as I storm down the hill, because Garza’s number one rule is respect your allies. Not that he’s my ally in anyone’s wildest dreams.

“What the _hell_ ,” I demand, stopping in front of both of them and cutting them off. “Is he doing here.”

“Rachel,” Miles puts himself between Monroe and me. “He’s here to help.”

I scoff. “How many times have we heard that one before?” Bas left—or ran—right after we met up with Underwood, the new President of Texas. They still wanted to kill him, obviously, but he went to look for Conner. There’s too many emotions in my head and I can’t think. Rage, for Danny. Sympathy, even though I don’t want it, because I’d also do anything to find my kids. Anger that he betrayed us so many times and we keep letting him come back. Memories, from years ago when we were such different people that it feels like it’s not even us. Shame. Fear. Of him or myself I don’t know.

“Believe me, I have my own reservations,” President Cortez walks out of the tent. “But Matheson,” she nods at Miles, who looks like he really was hoping we wouldn’t notice him. “vouches for him.”

“We could use him in the fight. He knows D.C. He knows some of these guys who can give us intel.” Miles looks at Cortez and not either of us. “But after that, do whatever you want. You won’t be able to catch him though.”

I just glare at Monroe. “Why? Why now?”

He opens his mouth to speak, and then pauses. Tries again. “Because I want these sons of bitches as bad as you do. They’re a threat as long as they’re alive. I don’t particularly trust any of you—”

“That makes all of us.” Cortez interrupts, her mouth twisted in a wry smile with sharp edges.  
  
“But we all have the same enemy, at least right now. Believe me, I don’t wanna be here anymore than you do. I’d rather be out there looking for my son. But I need these guys out of the way, and they need to pay for what they’ve done.”

I don’t even bother with a retort about hypocrisy and revenge and justice for your actions, because at this point, ethics are a joke and I don’t have time. I just lift my head and tell President Cortez, “Be careful.” I turn, sharp as a solider in line, and march off towards the river. It’s loud enough that I might be able to not hear myself think.


	12. The River— (Charlie)

The Potomac is beautiful. I can just see the bridge we’ll be crossing in less than forty-eight hours, after Buchannan and West and Haywood get here. We’re gonna advance on D.C., give them our terms, and if they surrender, great, if not (we’re all kind of hoping for not), then that’s great too.

Don’t get me wrong, no one wants to be in a fight. We’re all not stupid enough to think that battle is glorious or a good way to die or any of that crap. We just want revenge. Seventeen fucked-up years of fighting each other, of hiding, of strong-preys-on-weak mentality makes you a little crazy. Even if the Patriots hadn’t dropped the bombs, they knew. They knew about the power. They coulda done something. Anything. But they hid, waiting until we were at our weakest. Destabilized. Because even a country split into territories and challenged by militia and warlords still has some order to it. Violence keeps order just as well as laws.

Us – Alani, Teddi, and I—and when did I start to say ‘us’? —and a few others are taking a break from the general craziness of almost a thousand people by hanging out by the river. It feels weird to be doing nothing. But they asked, and I couldn’t say no.

I wade in up to my knees. I can literally see the dirt come off me and float downriver.

“I am. So gross.” Alani echoes my thoughts, holding her arms out in front of her.

“Yeah, you are.” Teddi agrees cheerfully, and she smacks the water with the flat of her hand in his direction. Some droplets hit me too and I turn too fast and almost fall.

“Charlie! Don’t worry, I’ll save you!” Alani sloshes over and dramatically throws her arms around me. “I won’t let you fall.” I laugh. _Did I ever play in the water like this? When I was younger?_

“No, she’ll just push you.”

“No one asked you, Tedd.” Alani tries to splash him again but he dodges, and then hits us with a wave. Soon we are in the middle of a full-blown water battle (and we’re way cleaner, too!)

I see Mom on the shoreline, and splash back to her, the water dragging at my legs like it wants me to stay. “What’s up?” I say slightly out of breath, because by now I can tell when something’s wrong.

“Nothing.” She’s fidgeting. “Monroe’s here.”

“What.” I’m surprised and also… not.

“My thoughts exactly. For some reason, they’re letting him fight. He’ll be gone after before they can catch him.”

My thoughts are, as usual, a whirlwind. We do need all the help we can get. But it’s Monroe. He’s not our biggest enemy. But it’s Monroe. But he helped us. But he’s Monroe. He killed Danny. He tried to kill us. But he protected us, too; he was Mom and Miles’ friend. And that’s where I always get stuck, because whenever he’s around, if I get past the blinding rage and hatred and grief, there’s something else in me that… not _sympathizes_ with him. Never. But maybe recognizes something. We’re all lost here. It’s like, I can see the history with him and my mom and Miles. Like if I threw dust at it, you could see it, like rays of sunlight. Like I could see the person he could have been to my family if things had been different. And, you know, if he hadn’t been a psycho murderer. Is that normal? Is there something wrong with me?

“The governments have _just_ managed to pacify everyone by saying he’ll stand trial for murder after we finish with the Patriots.”

“Yeah, like that’ll happen.” It’s funny what we’ll forgive if we have to, to have the best chance of survival. We can only focus our anger on one person at a time.

Mom lets out a deep breath. I know how much this kills her. More than me, and I always wonder if Danny would be angry with me for not killing Monroe on the spot, or if he’d understand?

I hear splashing behind me as Teddi and Alani join us. Mom’s expression changes so quick it throws me off too, even though I know how many masks she has.

“Rachel!” Alani looks like she wants to throw her arms around my mom, and Teddi looks about the same, they’re so excited to see her even though they saw her less than two hours ago. I’m suddenly struck with the realization that it’s been at least ten years since either of them have had a mom. Sometimes I think that we have all of our ages inside of us, and sometimes they just jump out. Like this, this is six-year-old Alani and twelve-year-old Teddi, needing their parents. Mom laughs and shakes her head, and something in my chest eases. I’m glad they like each other. I didn’t realize I cared.

“Hey. You guys wanna hear some embarrassing Charlie stories? I think we could all use some cheering up.”

“ _Mom_.”

“It’s always time for embarrassing Charlie stories,” Alani affirms.

“ _No_.”

“ _Yes_.”

“I have plenty of embarrassing Alani stories,” Teddi interrupts, winking overdramatically at Alani. “We could trade off.”

“Only if I get to tell the one about you and the fourth-grade play.” Alani close to me, reaching for my hair. She’s so close I can see all the different shades in her eyes.

“Is it a bug?”

“Naw. The water droplets look so pretty in your hair. Like a mermaid or something.” She smiles at me and I’m not sure what to do with my hands, so I stick them in my pockets like an idiot. Yeah. This is going well.

“In case anyone was wondering, Alani tried to do makeup in second grade, but it was with Sharpie and it didn’t come off for two weeks.” Teddi announces.

“In case anyone was wondering, Teddi tripped and knocked the whole set over during A Christmas Carol.”

We head back to camp like this, sharing stories. I almost have to stop because I miss Danny so much, but the force of my friends carries me—and him—forward. I even tell them about the time Danny and me tried to play hide-and-seek and we hid under the kitchen sink except we somehow knocked the pipe loose so when Dad tried to turn on the water, we and the water just exploded from under the sink. Our cries of alarm brought Mom from the office, who was really confused why there was a fountain in the kitchen. I almost forgot about that memory. I peer quickly over at Mom while I’m telling this, and her eyes are filled with more grief than I know how to name, but she’s smiling like she remembers how we all just started laughing, especially when the people below us started yelling about water leaking into their living room.

I think this is the first time we’ve been happy talking about Danny. And the—the conflict in mom’s eyes—the panic and the… the _overwhelmedness_ is gone for now. I should tell Teddi and Alani later. They’ll be happy they helped.


	13. --And the Rain (Rachel)

[July 29th, 2029]

The next day it rains. Dumps two months’ worth of rain in one day. It thunders down on the tents and pours off of any sloping surface. We all run around, covering the supplies, the horses, the weapons. Dad and I drag a tarp over the wagon with the medical supplies in it. At first, we’re all happy about it. There’s not much rain in the Midwest. But then it doesn’t stop, and it gets muddy, and we all know that means it’ll take the rest of the armies at least a few extra hours to get here, and then the river rises, and we try and find higher ground, except D.C. is pretty flat, so we end up just moving away from the river, and by the time we’re done, we’re all soaked and literally covered in mud.

“This is great for morale,” Miles comments, covering the last of the wagons with me. Everyone else’s taken shelter already. At least I think that’s what he says. I can’t really hear him over the rain. We race to our tent, and I can see Charlie, Teddi, and Alani a few tents down. I’m suddenly proud for no reason, that Charlie would stay out last to finish securing everything, even though she didn’t have to. Miles and I do one last check and then race to our tent. I can tell when we reach it by the way the sound changes from deafening to just loud, as Miles holds the tent open for me and then tries to close it against the slanting rain. I help him and together we just manage to tie it, so it’s at least mostly closed.

“How long do you think till they get here?” Nothing can travel in this weather, but knowing him, Buchannan probably planned for this and has umbrellas.

“Dunno. Tomorrow, if none of the horses breaks a leg.”

I start looking around the tent for dry clothes, not that I have to look very far, since these tents aren’t that big. “We should dry off.”

“Rachel, if I get killed by a cold after everything we’ve been through, then I should probably just die.” I roll my eyes and throw some dry—or at least drier—clothes at him. I’m holding my clothes and we stand there awkwardly for a moment, and then turn around. I change as fast as I can, but I hear Miles struggling. He definitely messed up his shoulder at some point. Probably at Fort Madison and he just didn’t tell anyone. I’m sure lifting everything today helped too.

I shake my head and wonder why men hate asking for help, and then go over and help him pull the shirt over his head. It’s warmer now. We stand there, not sure what to do as usual, and I can’t help but smile as Miles doesn’t seem to know where to look. He’s so stoic most of the time; it’s funny to see him like this. And if we’re being honest, I like when he’s like this. It reminds me—and him—that he’s human. Not just a soldier.

Miles breaks the silence and clears his throat, then throws himself down onto a pile of questionably clean blankets. I follow suit and we lay on the ground, hands behind our heads and I’m reminded of times I lay outside like this when I was much younger, watching the stars. I can pretend those tiny holes in the tent are planets.

“What’re you looking at?” Miles turns his head towards me.

“The tent,” I say, pointing. “The holes. They look like stars.”

He pauses and looks. “I think,” he observes. “They look like holes in a tent. Where rain gets through.”

I elbow him. “Where’s your imagination?”

“That was always your thing,” he says, nudging me back.

“Look where that got us.” I raise an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah yeah, you personally ended the world, we know. If you ask me, it woulda ended sooner rather than later anyway. You ever gonna give that up or are you just gonna hold that over the rest of us forever?” I smile despite myself.

Miles twists around, moving the blankets, and I don’t know what he’s doing until he pulls a small bottle out of his coat pocket. We finish it in two shots each, but hey, alcohol is alcohol.

I lean into him and I can feel him tense up in surprise for a second, then relax and tuck his arm around me. I can’t believe that in two days, this’ll all be over. This part at least.

Miles kisses my temple and sighs. “What’re we doing, Rachel.” Asked too many times to be a full question, so it’s more of an existential statement.

“About the Patriots? Or about us?”

He makes a noncommittal noise and gestures around at everything.

“The best we can.” I reach for his other hand and hold it, but not too tightly because that’s the hand that Andover smashed up. He takes a breath as I run my fingers over his and feel the scars and fractures, and I hold his hand up to mine. I’m reminded of _kitsungi,_ pottery that’s accidentally been broken while it was being fired, but instead of giving up and throwing it out, it’s repaired with gold or silver. If not for my family, I wouldn’t be here. But they make me whole, take my shattered pieces and hold them together. And there’s the logical part of my brain, that tells me attraction is nothing more than hormones, that love isn’t a real quantifiable thing; but I know it’s real and I know my brain only tells me this because of the other things I’ve been told, that this is wrong because it’s Miles, or what I’ve told myself, that I don’t deserve this; but almost everything in this world is terrible and shouldn’t we do what makes us happy while we can? I know a few things for certain, and one of those is that this, my family, Miles, is one of the only things I ever got right.

I space back into reality and realize Miles has been looking at me. “You think too much,” he says, tilting his head to kiss me.

“You work too much,” I say, and feel him laugh. 

“Someone’s gotta fix this mess,”

“I guess we’re someone.”

Somehow, this is peaceful, and peace is almost as hard to come by as electricity. But it abides anyway, in this makeshift tent surrounded by rain, and I suddenly feel like all of these tents are their own separate worlds, all of our lives just colliding like far-off stars.


	14. Our Version of a Sleepover (Charlie)

Alani, Teddi and I race for Alani’s tent, ducking our heads like that’ll do anything against all this rain. I think I see Mom and Miles out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t really see. I wonder if the rain is making everyone else feel this happy right now, like we’re all plants who needed water, or if I’m just losing it right before the fight. We half-fall into the tent, laughing at our plastered across our faces. I honestly don’t remember the last time I laughed this much.

The tent is a little crowded with three people. I’m doing my best to not get any mud on Alani’s bedroll, and so is Teddi, so we’re hopping around like weirdos until we find a safe patch of relatively dry ground. Alani spreads out a blanket for us. I roll on to it and Teddi flops down across from me. Alani’s comfortable enough with both of us to struggle her wet shirt off and find her other dry one, and me and Teddi definitely both aren’t watching her do that, right? Nope, not watching her at all. Definitely not. She flings the wet shirt across the room with a sudden violent movement and throws herself down next to us. We’re still giggly, and I feel like I do with them, light and full of light, like I’m a little drunk. 

I imagine this is what a sleepover must be like. Never had one, but we had a few kids’ books at the school, so I read about them. Teddi and Alani start play-fighting over the blanket. The rain’s still going just as hard as before and I sigh in exhaustion and turn over and stretch, my feet touching the edge of the tent. Teddi and Alani are both looking at me, where my shirt rides up even more than the usual length, and normally I couldn’t give less of a shit but for some reason I feel shy. I roll back over and they look away quick. I shove my questions down to a think-about-that-later box in my mind that I’ll open never.

“D.C. looks way different from Chicago,” I say just to break up the silence.

“Really? Like what?” Teddi tips his head to the side, trying to picture them both.

“It’s more urban. It’s taller. I mean, I can barely remember the city, but I always could see it.”

“You were outside the city, right? Your family moved there, and Aaron was your teacher?” Teddi asks. I don’t even remember telling him that, but I’m touched he remembers.

“Yeah. It was so green. It was only a few miles from the city, but the change was like a different world. I remember being so confused when we moved. There was this Ferris wheel, didn’t work, obviously, but sometimes we’d climb it anyway, even though we were told not to.”

“Well duh,” Alani crosses her eyes. “What’s the point of a Ferris wheel then?”

“I had...” I look down and half-laugh at myself. “I had this collection of postcards, from around the States and the world, and I would look at them and imagine going to those places someday. God, I was dumb.”

“That’s not dumb.” Teddi jumps in at the same time Alani says, “We were all dumb.” They make a face at each other and I smile, appreciating how they both made me feel better in different ways.

“D’you think the bridges’ll wash out?” Alani asks abruptly. She’s absentmindedly fiddling with the strap of her backpack and staring out at the rain. If it does, that throws our plans to hell.

“Nah. They’ve been here longer than us.”

“ _We_ might wash out if the rain doesn’t stop though,” Teddi looks up doubtfully.

“Better than California. Where there’s no rain. Ever. Remember the drought? The bad one?”

“Really?” I’ve never been to California. Never even thought about it. But now I think I might like to.

“Yeah. Okay maybe not ever, but there’s mostly just dry spells. And the ocean. And farmland. We lived right on the ocean. People said that was dangerous cause of, I dunno, pirates and stuff, but no one came from the ocean except on a few drifting ships— remember that?” Alani turns towards Teddi, who nods. “There was a few at the beginning. And some later, people who tried to sail across the ocean in old ships. I don’t know why.”

“What was over there? Across the ocean?” I lean forward. I’ve been stuck in the middle of the chaos that is the States that sometimes I forget there is the rest of the world, and when I do remember, it feels claustrophobic, like there’s all this land but I’m trapped on this tiny island.

“Same as us,” Teddi shrugs. “Anarchy. Violence. Total breakdown of society.”

“Damn.” I was hoping that maybe somewhere, people went less crazy. Kept hold of common decency and stuff like that. We’re quiet for a second, wondering what things are like over there. It takes all your brainpower to survive and keep going. I sometimes forget about how big the world is and how I used to dream about it.

“Be honest. Do you think we’ll ever get it back?” Alani’s voice is smaller, and she has a look in her eyes like a kid who’s just fallen down and needs her parent.

“I dunno.” Teddi shakes his head. “Maybe. If we can figure out why it went off in the first place.”

And just like that, all of the words, the explanations, are suddenly _burning_ to come out of my mouth, like they were waiting for someone to say that. It feels like I’m choking on them, and I have to literally clench my teeth together to not say anything. _Don’t say anything. Can’t tell them. Too dangerous. And they’d hate you._

“Charlie?” Teddi looks really concerned and I must look like I’m in pain. Funny. I used to be a better liar.

“Charlie? This is a sleepover,” Alani says, echoing my earlier thoughts. “You gotta spill the secrets.”

And even though I know my mom and Miles are only a few tents away and that everyone else who knows this is in grave danger and everyone who knows this is generally terrified of my family like we’ve betrayed them which I guess we have, the words burst out of my mouth anyway like a small explosion, all in one breath. “I know why the power went out.”

They both look at me cause I really don’t think that’s what they were expecting to come out of my mouth. My rational brain scrambles for a plausible reason to back this up when I eventually have to explain this to Mom, and maybe I can say _We should start telling people the truth about us so they can’t use lies against us_ which is actually pretty smart but all I can think is _I have to tell them because not telling them would be like lying_ and I really don’t want to lie to them for some reason.

I keep going before they can say anything. “So, like twenty-five years ago, my mom and Aaron and my dad and some of their friends were working on this project that would give us clean renewable energy and Aaron and Pricilla and their friends were also working on a project for MIT and they combined them trying to use nanotechnology like tiny little robots to power stuff except it backfired really badly and they sucked all the power and then Monroe, he wanted to turn the power back on because mom knew how and then she left to try and keep him from finding us but he came after us anyway and killed my dad and took Danny and I went after them but it didn’t matter cause Danny got killed anyway and then my mom had these things that were supposed to turn the power back on and we tried but the Patriots knew one of them was her boss and he tricked us and we turned it back on he dropped the bombs, they planned it, the Patriots, before, I don’t know how, and then we shut it off but it was too late—“ I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to see their faces and not wanting to relive that moment, because I can’t remember ever feeling so scared then and so horrified after, feeling like someone punched me in the chest and turned me hollow.

I finish as quick as I can. If I say it all at once I can’t psych myself out. “So the Patriots started taking over and no one knew who they were except us and a few others except when we turned the power on for a second the nanos came alive somehow, I don’t know how, I guess Aaron and my mom were smarter than they’d thought—“ I know I’m probably rambling now but I can’t stop, almost don’t want to, want to keep trying to explain this, this thing that’s been hounding me for years, like maybe if I say it all at once it will make more sense. “And they developed some sort of consciousness and now they’re off trying to hijack our brains which basically will kill us all so we have to go stop them after this because it’s our fault anyway, and—“ I search for words to keep talking because once I’m done I have to face what I just said. “I don’t know, maybe there’s a way to turn the power back on if we stop them if we even can stop them, I don’t know but that’s why the power went out and that’s why this is all like this. And I’m sorry.” Something rises in my chest, a wild, animal thing made from years of confusion and secrets, and even just a five-year-old girl who doesn’t know what’s going on, and I have to force it back down because the last thing I deserve is their sympathy. My heart is racing and I’m breathing like I’ve just sprinted from the end of camp and back and I’m too afraid to look up.

“What... the fuck?” Teddi’s voice breaks and he clears his throat. I’ve never heard him swear in the three weeks I’ve known him. That’s what I lo—like about him. The world didn’t make him bitter or hard.

“Charlie...” Alani’s voice is soft and I can’t tell if she looks heartbroken or very confused or just really freaked or all three.

Suddenly I’m exhausted, like all the fight from the past nearly-three years is gone. I slump against the corner of the tent, where I must’ve backed into, like I was expecting a fight.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. _Sorry for this mess? Sorry for not telling them sooner? Sorry for dragging them into this?_ Why am I apologizing? This wasn’t my fault. Hell, it’s only _partly_ Mom and everyone’s fault at this point. The rest is just bad luck. My voice takes over for me and I speak without knowing what I’m gonna say. “I didn’t want… I didn’t want to go into this without you knowing why. This is all happening. It wouldn’t be right to try and make a new world and keep the shit from the old one.”

Alani and Teddi are just staring at me. Then each other. Then me again. Then each other. I see every emotion under the sun crossing their face. Shock. Grief. Anger. Relief. Fear. Incomprehension. Understanding.

We’re all motionless, caught in the eyes of some predator, something far larger than us. Then Alani breaks the hold, launches herself at me before I have time to react.

And then her arms are around me and I can feel her pull me closer and then I feel Teddi too and he’s holding us both and I don’t move at first because sometimes I’m bad at expressing my feelings but with these two they all just come out so I wiggle my arms free and clutch the two of them as hard as I can. We stay like that for a solid five minutes, and I’m crying and I can feel Alani’s tears on my cheek and Teddi’s ragged breathing shakes through his arms but when we finally let go they are both looking at me with something I could call love, if I was braver.

“I can’t believe… you all held that for so long.” Alani half-whispers. I can’t believe it either. _Is this how Mom feels? Is this why she broke down all of those times?_ If you have someone you want to protect but telling them the truth means you tell them you failed to protect them, is that what this is? I had my family, but we were already in this. We were all already fucked up together. But breaking someone else’s heart? That’s entirely different.

“I just… Wow. I mean. This is… I didn’t… And then… But this means…” Teddi’s staring into space and I can see everything working itself out in his head. He swings his head back and forth and buries his head in his arms. “Jesus.”

“It’s… yeah, it’s a lot.” I agree. “I don’t even get half of it still. But we’re gonna fix it. We’re gonna try, anyway.”

They’re looking at me like I’m gonna run away, while I’m wondering why _they_ didn’t run away. Staring at each other like we were all just dropped onto a strange planet. “But…um… thanks for not freaking out and leaving or something,” I say quietly, still unable to look them in the eyes. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Charlieeee,” Alani waves her hands with some of her usual vigor back. “We would never leave! What kinda people do you think we are!”

I make some sort of noise that indicates that I think most people would probably punch my family collectively in the face, but these two, miraculously, aren’t having it. “We’ve all done shit,” Teddi says. “Before, after, doesn’t matter. You didn’t do this on purpose. You all got fucked over too. No one knew this would happen. There’s no way they coulda even guessed. So don’t you dare blame yourselves for this. Maybe the power went out, but what happened _after_ is on all of us.” We all breathe his words in, this knowledge breaking like a wave.

“But uh…” Alani breaks in. “Just so you know, that is not the kind of thing one typically shares at sleepovers.” We all burst out laughing and it hurts because I have a stitch in my side from breathing so hard, but I am more relieved and happy than I can explain that they didn’t leave so I don’t care, and we all collapse on the ground in some sort of overtired, traumatized, _alive_ tangle of people who’re laughing in the face of absolute madness, because sometimes, what else is there to do?


	15. Dull Roots and Spring Rain (Rachel)

[July 30th, 2029]

The rain must’ve stopped sometime overnight, because I wake up to the sound of birds. I poke Miles till he unenthusiastically rolls over, and then I reach for my shoes, pulling the blanket with me (much to his dismay).

Sometimes I think the universe has a sense of humor, because the sunrise is spectacular.

“Damn.” Miles yawns as he comes out of the tent. He leans into me and I wish I could take a picture. I guess it was a good thing we all took so many photos of the sunrises and sunsets when we had the chance.

Around us, everyone else is waking up too, looking at the sky, checking on the horses, dumping water off of tarps. The river didn’t flood, but it’s significantly higher, the banks overflowing and creating a muddy ground that doesn’t know whether it wants to be earth or water.

Everyone looks younger in this light. Maybe because we’re all still half-asleep, less guarded, less gaunt. Like we haven’t put on our armor just yet. I see Charlie come out of a tent a few spaces down with Teddi and Alani and she gives me a small, almost embarrassed smile. I raise an eyebrow at her, and she just gives me the same look. Touché.

Everything is absolutely drenched, but by some miracle, nothing is ruined except for one wagon of food supplies when the cover slipped. But to balance it out: we now have a nearly-endless supply of water, especially with the containers we set out yesterday.

Dad and I check the medical supplies, which are fine, and I release some of the worry that’s been pressing on my chest for all of yesterday. We’re gonna need those.

Dad looks at me like he’s having the same thought. “There’s plenty of doctors. We’ll be fine.” I don’t know if he’s reassuring me or himself.

Buchannan and the rest of the troops roll in a little after noon, and the camp is overflowing with new faces and runners carrying messages and doctors being organized into squads and squadrons being organized into locations where we will surround the city. It’s a mess, and it’s demanding, but the feeling of _we’re-almost-there_ overcomes the strain.

I’m tying down wagons of supplies for their trip across the river, when I feel a tug on the rope on the other side.

“Hey,” Charlie says, pulling the rope tighter around the boxes.

“Hi,” I say. “Grab that end over there?” We work in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and it takes only ten more minutes to get to the rest of the wagons.

“Hey Mom?” Charlie calls from behind a stack of crates and then pops her head around. There’s conflict written all over her face and I wait for her to say something. Except then one of the wagons starts sliding down a hill, the ground unstable because of all of the rain, and any conversation is lost because we dive for the ropes.

“I got it!” Teddi, appearing out of nowhere, slams his body against the wagon next to Charlie. Together, the three of us manage to push and pull the wagon onto level ground.

“That was almost really bad,” Teddi pants. Charlie flicks dirt off her face and I try and stifle a laugh, because they’re covered in mud from the spray from the wheels. I’m fine, because I was standing on the other side.

They both look at each other and burst out laughing, and I swear the sun gets brighter.


	16. Unreal City (Charlie)

[August 1st, 2029]

D.C. is a ghost town. The Patriots cleared everyone out weeks ago. A group of us—Garza, Allen, Harrison (Garza’s lieutenant), Miles, Hayden, Ramona, Carter, and seventeen other rebels (I don’t know the new one’s names yet)—crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge south of camp. The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is closer, but less stable. I try and imagine what it looked like when cars crossed this bridge, but I honestly can’t remember what moving cars look like. Just the abandoned, empty, rusting ones.

We’re going to deliver our terms. We debated how to do it, if just walking up to the White House was a suicide mission, but we’re pretty sure they’re not stupid enough to shoot the messengers. But you never know. I volunteered cause want to be on the front lines, and cause I needed to get out of there. Too many complicated feelings. I looked back over the bridge once. Mom and Grandpa at the front to see us off, and Teddi and Alani were there too, and every other fighter in our army behind them, even though many were still at camp. It felt like something more momentous than usual, with that bridge between us. We were stepping from one territory to another, _ours_ to _theirs_.

We pass the Lincoln Memorial. The World War II Memorial. We avoid the Washington Monument, partly out of exposure, partly because it seems wrong standing there; too tall, too white, too clean, too sterile. We cut through the ‘German-American Friendship Garden’ and I suddenly have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Imagine what they would think now.

I realize my hands are shaking and I clench my fists. It’s like seeing the past. This is what the world looked like. I didn’t even know what it looked like, cause we avoid most cities. It feels so empty, like those paper-thin leaves, almost translucent but you can still see the veins running through them. Miles looks at me, like _you okay?_ I shake my head, like _I dunno._

There’s some huge, elliptical park that looks like it used to be farmland. More parks. _Why did the President have so much land? What the hell does anyone need this much land for?_

And by the time I know it, we’re there. It feels like it should’ve taken longer. The creepy part is that I don’t see very many Patriots. Maybe twenty lining the road, ten more around the front garden area, two at the doors. So where’s the rest? They don’t move, and we don’t move on them. It’s like an ignoring battle. We’re all looking out of the corners of our eyes at each other. It feels weird to not be fighting, even more wrong to just walk through them. The White House is somehow enormous but also less imposing than I thought. We form up in front of the main entrance, Garza, Allen, and Harrison at the front. Miles steps forward. They decided to let him make the call cause he’s the most wanted, and it would piss the Patriots off.

“Davis!” Miles shouts, not bothering to use his title. “We wanna have a little chat, if that’s okay with you. Just us, our twenty guys, and you and your eight hundred.” Eight hundred is a generous guess, going on the higher end in a -safe-than-sorry move. “You know. Diplomacy stuff. These guys—” (he means the three military dudes) “have a proposition for you, and if you take the offer, it’ll be a slightly less humiliating defeat. Your choice.”

I turn a laugh into a cough, and I see Ramona and a few others do the same. Nothing stirs, except for a tattered American flag waving in the slight breeze. But we know they’re listening. Now we just wait.


	17. Hope in the Dark (Miles)

My voice is the only sound in the silence of the capital, but is absorbed by the emptiness of the city, the enormity of the building, and the ivy trying to reclaim it. I step back and we wait. And wait. And wait.

I’m about to yell again when the door opens slightly. Every Patriot stands at attention. I can feel our group change position ever so slightly, shift on our feet in case we have to run.

The president exits, flanked by two more Patriots. “Allen. Garza. Harrison.” He nods cordially at each of them, still pretending to be polite and mannered and whatever other bullshit. We got a lot of defectors like Gene, tricked or manipulated or just blind, who walked their way in and couldn’t get out. And we got a few full Patriots, who came to their senses eventually. I heard the stories. There’s something on his hands that looks suspiciously like blood. Could be ketchup. Nah, it’s blood.

Davis surveys our group. “Well. You actually did it. You actually all stopped fighting long enough to fight us. I have to say, I’m impressed.” He chuckles like he said anything amusing in the past minute and I want to punch him. I don’t know why anyone’s still listening to him. We all know who he _was_. Some random asshole businessman, stepping into the power vacuum. Charismatic enough to convince the Patriots he’d make a good figurehead. Brutal enough to prove it. But other than that—what does he have?

Garza’s voice is level, like Davis didn’t even say anything. “You’re outnumbered. You’re surrounded. We all know what you’ve done. Surrender and no one else will die because of this.”

I agree, but I don’t think Davis really cares about other people dying.

He doesn’t. “Let’s make a deal—”

“No deal,” Harrison interrupts. “You give yourself up now, and we will treat you with relative decency until we decide what to do with you. All of you—” he makes sure to look around at the other Patriots. “will get a fair trial. Some of you had little choice in being here. Some of you didn’t know the full extent of what you’re doing. If you stay with him, you’ll most likely die.”

I can’t tell what’s going through the guards’ minds. Conflict? Scorn? Hesitation? They’re all too well-trained and some of them might be brainwashed, so who knows.

“And if I say no?”

“You got twelve hours,” Allen says. “Raise a flag. Send a messenger. I don’t care. After that, this is on you.” We talked about making it twenty-four hours, but that gives them more time to do something we don’t like.

“Well then,” Davis is already turning around, like we’re not worth his time. “I’ll see you in twelve hours then.” With that, he goes back into the White House, bodyguards following without a sound or any sign of recognition of anything that just happened.

“Well,” I exhale. “That went well.”

* * *

By the time we get back to camp, it’s already mostly packed up. Everyone knew what the Patriots were going to say. They (and by they, I mean the leaders of the three nations present—I wanted to skip this whole thing) just wanted this as a formality to prove we’re going to be better than them. I mean, _I guess_. But we all knew it was gonna be a waste of time.

Rachel pushes through the crowd to us as we reach camp. “Nope,” I say, shaking my head. “He’s not gonna do it.”

“Don’t forget, Miles, we still have…eleven more hours.” Charlie says mockingly, drawing out each word and rolling her eyes. “Davis could have a change of heart.”

“He doesn’t have a heart.” Ramona wryly notes, ducking around us to go help someone take down a stuck tent.

I expected more chaos. But this is, somehow, a tightly wound, but very controlled fighting force. By afternoon, we’re all clear on our positions. By evening, we surround D.C., hiding on the outskirts, in parks or small patches of trees, with medical teams lined up at each location. Runners by foot or on horses stop by every so often to check or give us new info. By one a.m., everyone’s so on edge I can’t hear myself think. And by two, a calmness falls, like we all were just waiting for an answer. 

The plan is pretty simple: Split into formations. Attack from all sides. Watch out for traps. Watch each other’s backs. Don’t die. See? Easy.

Some of us are taking the ground, and some of will keep watch and take out guards from the roofs. Which translates to: I’m taking the ground because climbing is a bitch when you get old, and Charlie insists on the roof, probably because she wants to feel tall. She doesn’t appreciate me pointing that out.

I appreciate that this isn’t the traditional form of fighting. It seems to me we’ve had enough armies and militias. This is more what I’m used to as of late—hit-and-run, use your surroundings to your advantage, the goal is to take out or incapacitate as many as you can, and we all keep going until we reach the White House. Basically, what we’ve been doing for the past two months, but way bigger. We could take the usual route and advance as one army, but that’s stupid. They’d pick us off so easy. This isn’t the Civil War, although the parallels are scarily similar. If we wanna take them down, we gotta be smart. Which is why we’re hiding in the woods at three in the morning. We move out at four, and hopefully we’ll be there before the sun gets too bright. They can’t shoot us if they can’t see us.

I’ve never mounted an attack this large like this. The last time I went head-to-head as part of an army... well, the Militia isn’t something I like to think about that much.

I’ve almost worn a track in the ground from where I’ve been pacing, and I don’t even notice till Charlie comes up to me. We can’t see D.C. yet in the dark, but we’re both staring at it like it’s gonna move or something. There’s no light, not even torches that I can see.

“This is it.” Her words mingle with the night air and she’s shifting from foot to foot, to stay warm or from nerves or both.

I nod and then realize she probably can’t see that. “Yeah.”

“One down, one to go.” She sounds so determined that I almost don’t want to remind her how hard this is gonna be. What is it with kids and thinking they can do anything?

“We haven’t even gotten through this one yet.”

“We will. Didn’t think it would be like this though,” she says.

I decide to give her a hard time, just because I can. “Us having backup, or you having friends?”

She looks at me so fast I almost laugh. “The backup, asshole.”

“Hey, hey,” I hold up my hands in a gesture of peace. “I like seeing you smile. You always walk around scowling at everyone.”

“Says you, the guy who everyone literally jumps out of the way for.”

“It’s the sword.”

“Ha ha.” She’s smiling at me and I can see her shoulder relax ever so slightly, but then her face darkens and she says something about going to check on the horses, and I know who it is before I even turn around.

“Bas.” My sigh is somewhere between sarcastic enthusiasm and annoyed resignation. I wonder if he knows all the conflict he causes in people. Probably. And knowing him, he probably enjoys it.

“Hey Miles.” He’s quiet for a moment. That’s about all he’s ever quiet for. “This bring back any memories?”

“I mean, hopefully there’ll be less slaughter and innocent bloodshed but yeah. Memories.” Images of all the cities and towns we took rise up in my mind. I remember how we always used to ask how history happened, all the tragedies, all the wars. It happened just like this. People who were afraid, or angry, or cowards, or just mean. Following a leader who let them take out their darkest whims on others in the name of order or a solution that they know is a lie anyway, just so they can do what they want.

Next to me, Bas shakes his head. “How long are you gonna let that drag you down? We did what we did.”

“Well, we can’t all be missing a conscience.”

“And what’re you gonna do after, huh?” He turns towards me, violently. “You gonna turn me in? You gonna let them tie me up, pretend that’s justice?”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Bas!” I try and keep my voice down. “I should let them have you. Hell, I should help them.”

“Then why’ve you let me go all the other times?”

I don’t respond, because I don’t know, and he knows it, and I _do_ know, and he knows it. “Honestly? I’ve got bigger things to worry about.” Which is true, even if it’s a cop out. I spot Hayden in the slightly-brighter shade of gray between trees and lope over to her, ignoring Bas. He’ll be gone hiding in the woods like a troll or something before anyone else sees him.

Hayden’s also watching the city. “Almost ready. You okay to lead Three?”

I nod. I like Hayden. She doesn’t care so long as you’re a halfway decent person and can follow orders. She was one of the first to believe our story when we first came in with the Rangers.

Also, she trusts me enough to let me lead a squadron. Even though we’ve been fighting together for three months, and we’re not being framed for the nukes anymore, we’re not exactly anyone’s favorite. Oh well. I’m not here to win a popularity contest. Hayden lets out a long breath.

“Nervous?”

“Nah. Just wanna get going.” As if they heard her, a runner on horseback breaks from the trees and the half-assed path we hacked from point to point of entry circling around the city. They slide to a stop next to Garza, and I hear “Buchannan says ready in ten.” Which means we have ten minutes to get lined up, and then we attack.

Hayden looks too excited about this. I tell her as much, and she laughs. “You sound like Alyssa.” She heads off towards the medical groups, where Alyssa, who’s a doctor, is. I follow, cause that’s probably where Rachel is too.

The medical wagons are probably the most organized part of this whole endeavor, but Rachel’s still pacing around, running her hands through her hair, checking over everything, making sure it’s in place. “Hey. Have you seen Charlie?” The usual worry is written all over her face, times a hundred. This is the biggest attack we’ve mounted, and probably the most important.

I shake my head. “Probably with Alani and Teddi.” We both share a grin at that, not having the words for whatever this is but knowing it’s something we can smile about.

“Mom.” Charlie runs up to us. “We’re heading out.” She pauses, as if the enormity of what we’re doing’s finally caught up to her. “See you soon.” she says, without a hint of doubt wavering her voice, like we’re not in this hellworld and she’s just going to the store. She walks backwards for a few steps, looking at us both, amusement running through her next words. “Tell Aaron and Priscilla that I’ll find them a good room in the White House. A big one.” Aaron’s been talking about sleeping in a real bed for the past two weeks straight. Then she races off to her post, and we watch her until she fades into the mist and the trees and other rebels.

A whistle to my left. “That’s me.” I say, and kiss Rachel fast. It’s not dawn yet, but the world starts glowing anyway. We back up into the wagon and then she breaks off and pushes me towards my squadron.

“See you soon.” she says, echoing Charlie’s irrational hope or stupid optimism or just plain stubbornness.

“Yes ma’am.” I give her a sarcastic salute and turn before I can see her exasperated (but adoring) smile.


	18. Hiding and Seeking (Miles)

[August 2nd, 2029]

We break from the trees on the signal, each with our own squads. I quickly lose sight of the others as we wind through the streets. They’re empty. Patriot’s’ve all gathered at the White House, like at a hive. Everything is completely quiet except for the birds and the occasional breeze. Every time we end up in one, I remember why we left the cities. It’s too cramped. Too claustrophobic and too much space at the same time. This is a god-awful place for a fight. I’d say the Patriots did that on purpose, but once again, it’s just our bad luck. Although I feel like it’d be weird to make the final stand anywhere but the capital. Former capital? Whatever. Pressley, a Georgia captain, is co-leading with me. She’ll get us there and I’ll do tactical. Bas is here too, because I’m the only one who’s gonna be able to rein him in. The only other ones I recognize are Gracie and Carter. I don’t know anyone else, but I don’t need to—their eyes show the same readiness for a fight I’m feeling.

We reach our position in about half an hour. I can distantly see Patriots stationed all around the White House, circling it with shoddy and slapdash but sturdy six-foot-tall shields. They’re crude and made of patchworks of scrap wood and metal but effective. _That should be our tagline_. _Crude but effective._ The guards are on all the roads boxing it in. Good thing we came around the back, or they woulda seen us. We’re not _that_ stupid. Just dumb enough to do this. In case anyone was wondering, I still feel like this could be a trap. It’s not like Davis doesn’t know we’re coming.

I run through the math in my head again to keep myself focused on something. We’re split up into five divisions of about two hundred, stationed around the central part of D.C. From there, we have eight squadrons of twenty-five or so. I’m leading squadron number three of division four, also known as D-4 S-3. Charlie’s in D-4 S-7, playing sniper-on-a-roof. There’s fewer numbers per squad, sure, but we cover a lot more ground. If we wanted, we could form a complete circle around the White House, twice. We could sing Kumbaya while we’re at it. Right now, we’re taking out as many guards as we can before we enter the completely exposed lawn in front of the White House. We definitely have the numbers to storm the White House, but no one’s feeling like being cocky and losing our shot cause we thought we could take them head-on.

I search the buildings to my right and left, and about a mile in front of me, the dim reflection of something called the Tidal Basin. Two divisions are covering down there, closing the gap, so the Patriots can’t get out on the water. Charlie’s to my left on top of a big-ass building, Teddi’s down there somewhere in the trees, Alani is in front of me behind a slightly smaller building. I almost smile at how fast those two got into my head. I’m definitely going soft in old age. Pretty sure Rachel wants to adopt them already. She’s coming around the city by the river with the rest of the med teams making their way through the city. They’re coming in later, so they don’t get caught in any fire, and the Patriots are too distracted by us to see them.

There’s a movement and we all throw ourselves back until we’re hidden in the graying shadows. Patriots. Five of them. They don’t think to look up. Our arrows hit them without a sound, and they fall silently too. There were some arguments about whether or not to all attack from the ground, but this way helps conserve ammo and we get some out of the way, too.

We find the quickest way and dash across the street, taking cover in another copse of trees. I wonder if the Patriots can tell we’re here. That survival instinct that’s kept me alive is off and running, telling my eyes and the little hairs on the back of my neck that the rest of our army is watching for me the way I’m looking for them. I’m pretty sure this is what Spiderman feels like. I genuinely forgot about Spiderman till a few days ago, when Teddi and Alani were telling us how they used to read through Teddi’s dad’s collection of comics and pretend to be superheroes. Because this is _definitely_ a useful thought to have right now. Although superpowers would be handy right now.

I spot a signal from all the way across the lawn. That’s right: signal fires. Gotta do what you gotta do. _God I miss electricity_. There’s someone in every group in charge of the torch. We made up basic signs—left, right, advance, retreat, look out, help, etc. Whatever group’s across from us tells us that they’ve taken down all the guards in their area. We tell them that we did too, and I see other torches darting in and out of the trees, and a few on the roofs too. The Patriots’ll obviously see these, but they won’t know what they mean. It was the best we could do covering this much ground.

The sky is so close to dawn that everything’s nearly the same shade of gray, so I almost miss the three Patriots who jump out at us. I react before my brain catches up and as usual, my sword’s faster than their guns. I get two, and Bas gets the other one. He nods at me, like _See? This is fun. Just like the old days._ Yeah. So fun. I turn away from him and those memories and focus on our target.

Soon there’s a small army of flickering lights surrounding the White House, moving steadily closer. The goal is to keep the Patriots focused on the fires, and also psych them out. Hey, we’re taking whatever ideas we can get at this point. But I know for certain that the brightest thing catches your eye. Fire’s pretty distracting.

As if on cue, something sails out from the east side, where the sky’s getting lighter. It hits the side of the White House and explodes. Yep. Found Hayden.

More Molotov cocktails fly out from the trees, the fire blending in with the rising sun. We use this as cover as we break for the White House. We borrowed their supplies from the armory in Fort Madison and made about three or four hundred bombs. Their shields might protect them against bullets, but explosions not so much. The Patriots’ve caught on by now, and I hear them start shooting, but they can’t see us that well with two hundred people launching explosives at them.

As we get closer, I see that they’ve hastily boarded up the windows and entrances to the White House, most on fire or scorched now. I was right. They are scared. I thought I saw it in Davis’s face. I thought I saw it in the stances of the guards. They knew we have them. _But,_ that small voice warns me, _how far are they willing to go to the end?_

I spot movement and see what I couldn’t in the early dawn lighting. “Down!” I roar, and hit the dirt as bullets whiz past us. Trenches. Hidden in the shadows of the defenses. Did I _not_ learn from the land mines?

My mind races. Gotta take ‘em out so we can cross. I take it one question at a time. _How far does the trench go?_ All the way around. _How many in there?_ Probably two hundred or so. We took out about fifty to a hundred guards. So that leaves about five fifty. If I were the Patriots, I woulda sent some out and around to try and circle us and pin us down from the back. I’m not too worried about that though, cause we expected that and didn’t send in all our guys yet either. So I can safely estimate about four hundred in the actual White House. Shooting at us from barricades and gun turrets. Yay.

There’s an explosion to my left as someone throws a bomb at the trenches. Bas and I use the distraction to crawl forward until we can drop into the trenches. Good: there’s not a lot of room for the Patriots to move. Bad: there’s not a lot of room for us. But that’s why swords come in handier than guns right about now.

Some of the others catch on and use the spaces we clear up to drop down beside us. We slowly take over the circle surrounding the White House, and soon the trenches are more or less clear.

I hear guns from a different direction and stick my head over only to duck back again. There’s the Patriots’ second front, just like we thought. But—I hear a further commotion beyond that. That’s us. Teddi’s in that group, cutting off access to the river.

“Come on!” Bas yells, motioning towards the other side of the trench. We made it close to a door. The barricade is mostly blown away. We shoot at it to clear the other side, climb out of the trenches, and ram ourselves into the door. And just like that, we’re in.

I’ve obviously never been inside the White House, but the inside is just as ridiculous and expensive as I imagined. We don’t stop as broken glass crunches beneath our feet and chunks of plaster threaten to trip us, busting through surprised guards and up the stairs. _Okay_. Now we just gotta find Davis. One giant game of hide and seek.


	19. Fire in Our Hands (Charlie)

The world’s become a blur of sound and fire and faces running past me. We waited on top of our lookout until Hayden threw the first signal, then scrambled down to join the fight from the back. This is the biggest battlefield I’ve ever seen, and I feel like we’re in the history books from the past two hundred years or something. Trenches. Civil war. There’s even no electricity! It tracks.

I’m somehow not out of arrows, but I’m getting close, so I swoop down and grab a fallen Patriot’s gun. _You know what would be nice right now though? Armor. Or Kevlar._ I’m trying not to look at the fallen or wounded. If I do, I’ll want to stop. Sometimes I don’t think my hands belong to me. I think they’re Mom’s or Grandpa’s, or mine from just a few years ago. They want to stop and help stop the bleeding. I wonder if everyone feels like this. _Come on. There’s medics. Keep moving._

I push on, keeping as low as I can, hiding behind trees as we scatter through old parks. I spot Delaney and Ryan and a few others in a makeshift trench, an old empty pool. I raise my hand briefly and Ryan gives me a head nod and Delaney whoops. I feel like cheering too, every time I see someone I know is still alive. I haven’t known any of these people for very long, and my instinct has always been to keep away from people, but the feeling of fighting… for something this big, this important, means I can believe in some part of them the way they believe in me.

I dive into a circle of overgrown shrubs that haven’t been tended in seventeen years and take out a few more Patriots. From the ground, I see Miles and Monroe break from the trenches (when did they even have _time_ to dig this?) and bust through a door. I know they’re only two people, but triumph rises in my chest anyway. I have to shove my face in the dirt again as bullets zoom over my head, and when I look up, Miles and Monroe are gone.

It’s almost cozy in here. I just really wanna just lay down and take a nap, but I can see the Patriot’s second wave closing in, so I don’t do that. They’re getting closer. Should I run for it? Will they see me here? Inspiration strikes. I drop down onto my stomach and lay my crossbow almost parallel to the ground. And then I shoot. One Patriot goes down, and then another, and they all look _so_ confused about where these arrows are coming from at knee and ankle height. I really want to laugh but I’ll mess up my aim. I feel the vibrations in the ground before I hear footsteps, and someone busts into my hideout.

“Nice,” Gracie pants, looking harried but not injured. Carter throws himself in behind her and laughs in surprise at his surroundings. 

“Creative. I like it.” He’s got a gash on his head but seems fine.

I flash them a grin and skootch on my ass because there’s not enough room to stand up towards the side as they take my place. When they start shooting, I duck out of the bushes and run like hell for the doors. My feet hit pavement and I almost stumble because I’m not used to paved roads. A Patriot sees me, so I veer away and then swerve again to throw him off as I ram myself into his side. He goes down and I grab his gun for an extra, and then I dodge the snipers on the roof, and past the scattered, distracted guards with Carter and Gracie shooting at them, then the shadow of the White House falls over me, and then I slide and roll under a shield and then back myself up against a wall, hoping that the guards won’t bother to look behind it and that they won’t notice I’m shooting them and not the attackers, and then I hop through a broken window, into the walkthrough from the White House to another building on the side, and I’m in. I let out a breath and look back and forth down the hallway. _Which way?_

I can see how it used to look, the carpets and walls faded and molding, even though I’m sure Davis had them try to clean it. Of course, everything’s being slowly demolished by us, but I can tell how expensive this place was. _Ostentatious_. That’s the word. The gardens are overrun, and I feel a weird thrill at the fact that nature’s reclaiming this place. If the rest of the world looks like shit, then this place should too.

I try a few rooms and I almost burst out laughing several times, because _jesus this place is so ugly_. The walls are garishly red and everything looks so tacky. _This was the best they could come up with_? I edge back around to the broken windows. While I’d love to find and kill Davis (just kidding; we have to capture him and hold him for trial), my priority is up. If the Patriots start throwing mustard gas once we all get here, and there’s a ninety-nine percent chance they will, they’ll throw it from up high. I’m gonna go find it. I _could_ run through these stupid shiny hallways. Or, I could climb. 

I double check my bag. I’m one of the few not carrying explosives, because I’m carrying something else. Me and Mom did… science that I still don’t quite get and made more of that stuff that neutralizes mustard gas. We took a bunch of god-knows-what from the Fort Madison supplies and Mom made tiny bombs, so worst comes to worst and they set it off, we throw these in the mix and hopefully the neutralizer and the water mix with the mustard gas mix while they’re in the air. Key word hopefully. No one’s ever done it like that before. Whatever their mustard gas is made of isn’t exactly military-grade, and neither is our stuff. It’s all guesswork, so hopefully our guesses are as good as theirs. She thinks it’ll work, and I do too. She’s probably the smartest person I know.

_Okay, time to go…_ I jump through another gap in the wall to the side of the White House and find a quieter corner (quieter: meaning no live bombs at this moment) behind a bedraggled tree, which I follow all the way up. If I was gonna gas anyone, I’d do it from there. Those windows right next to the circular part, where I would definitely put the President cause it’s farthest from open conflict. That’s where one of the defected Patriots thought it would be, anyway. Still not sure if I trust it, but it’s all I’ve got to go off of. The foundations shake as I climb the first branch of the tree and then wedge my foot into the windowsill. It’s not that it’s tall. It’s that I need to keep out of sight. Although no one’s gonna be looking my way, because no one else is dumb enough to literally climb the side of the enemy fort. Yay me. The farthest window appears to enter into an empty room; they’re all probably gathering around the President. I shuffle over and half-fall into the room, hoping no one saw me.

Patriots rush past outside and I throw myself to the opposite corner, out of view. None of them are looking in my direction anyway. Cool.

The room I’m in looks like a bedroom. It almost looks like a kid’s room. It must be Davis’s grandson’s. How that piece of human garbage even has a kid is beyond me. There’s no one in the hallway, probably because the fire’s concentrated on the other side of the building. I wonder if it’s cause they saw me climb up. I dash from room to room but I don’t find anything. Maybe I’m just an idiot and there’s no way they would hide it in plain sight like this? But then I see a flash of uniform and flatten myself to the wall. There. There’s five Patriots in there. It has to be the mustard gas.

I don’t know if I can take five at once. I have eight arrows left. Take out two. Notch one. Take a deep breath. Fire. Fire again. The first and second ones drop, and then the three start shooting. We’re at a standstill, cause I’m stuck out here but they can’t leave the cache. _What to do, what to do…_

I hear muffled voices and duck behind an ornamental dresser right before one comes out. My best option is move as fast as I can. I hurl myself at his legs and he falls, slamming his head into the side and knocking himself out cold. _Point for me._ Thanks gravity. The other two open fire again and a bullet rips through the decorative wallpaper to skim my shoulder. It feels like something so hot it feels cold. I can still move my arm, barely.

“Did we hit her?” I hear one loudly whisper.

“Dunno.”

“Should we check?”

“Can’t leave this.”

“McElroy’s out there.”

“Leave him.”

I almost laugh at their opposites. The talkative one is clearly uncomfortable, and I briefly wonder if I can get him to come to our side. The other one sounds like he’s just here to do his job. Problem is, I don’t know if I can hit both of them with my arm like this. I’m readying myself to try anyway, when I hear something break, and a yell, and a thud.

I peek around the corner and a grin breaks across my face. Gracie and Carter seem to have busted through the connecting door and taken them out for me.

“Hayyy,” Gracie drawls. “I think this is our stop.” They’re also on mustard gas duty. And yes, we made plenty of jokes about “gas duty,” with lots of suppressed laughter from Alani, Miles, and me, and much eye-rolling from Teddi and Mom.

“We’re in then?” I use the doorway to pull myself up and join them in inspecting the giant barrels with yellow x’s over them.

“Yeah.” Carter nods. “We broke through the trenches a few minutes ago. There’s still a lot of fighting down there, and I don’t expect them to give up just cause we got the White House.”

“More likely they’ll blow up the White House with them still inside it,” Gracie mutters, circling a barrel. “How do we do this?”

“Like this.” I loosen a pouch of neutralization powder (much shorter than the actual chemical name, believe me) and look around. There’s a bathroom off to the side. I try the sink and cheer “Yessss,” to myself as it turns on.

“Hose!” Gracie tosses one at me tucked in a corner of the room and almost hits me in the face. “Whoops. Sorry.”

“No smoke detectors,” Carter muses, looking around at the ceiling. “They must have a well, just a gravity-based pump.” He was a physicist or an engineer before this, I think. “That’s why the hoses.” He looks out the window. “See that line in the grass? I think it runs all the way to the Basin. There’s the hatches, see over there? Not drinkable, but at least there’s running water.” Something we all haven’t seen in a very long time. _What a huge waste of time. I bet he did it just to show off._ Although it did backfire on them, so haha.

We attach the hose to the faucet and run the other end to the barrel. I hold my breath as we lower it in, and I’m doing my best to keep my hands steady as I dump the powder in. Then we turn the water on and wait. “How do we know if it worked?” Gracie whispers when the barrel’s half-full.

I shrug. “We don’t.” We do the rest of the barrels to the soundtrack of fewer explosions but more gunshots as our side runs out of Molotov cocktails. No one aims towards this window, probably because they know what’s up here. Still, we don’t stand close to the window.

Rebels sprint past us, heading for the middle of the White House. I can hear the shouting getting louder and louder, and it feels weird to be standing still with all this commotion around us. I risk a glance out the window and I see our second force coming like a tsunami across the huge open field, sweeping up any Patriots in its path. We look at each other with something like real hope in our eyes. The Patriots don’t stand a chance now. They’re running, trying to regroup, but there’s too many of us. I hear us flood the first level of the White House, yells of surrender, footsteps thundering up and down stairs. I hear a shout of fury and I can’t tell whose side it’s from. But something doesn’t feel right. They haven’t used--

As if on cue, I hear a crash to our right, and something yellow catches my eye. _Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—_

“FUCK!” Gracie shouts, echoing my thoughts. I drop my bag and scramble for the other pouches, mixed in with gunpowder, and two boxes of matches that Miles tossed at me before we split.

“Here.” I shove the matches at Carter. “Mom coated them with something. They have to burn through the outside before hitting the canister part. Gives it more bang. You light I’ll throw.” He follows my instructions, and suddenly I’m holding a fireball. My brain panics for a second because _Fire!!! Drop now!!!_ and I launch it out the window, where it hits the ground and explodes in a billow of white dust. Mustard gas is heavy. This stuff is lighter. The hope is that they’ll meet in the middle. Gracie’s taking the hose and trying to at least tamp down the yellow smog, trying to convince physics to work for us. No one’s ever tried to neutralize live gas before, and even though I don’t believe in any gods, I’m praying to anyone I can think of that this’ll work, because the gas is creeping its way down the side of the building like a vine, winding its way like a snake ready to crush and suffocate the people below.

I throw a few more and then race out of the room towards the Patriot’s last room, Carter and Gracie right behind me. _The Patriots-- they’d kill their own_. I can’t say I’m surprised, but something in me still recoils. We hurl ourselves down the hallway and up a flight of stairs like there’s a live fuse burning behind us. I can tell we found the right room cause the doorway, missing the door, is barricaded with masked Patriots behind a it. _Shit. Gotta get through there._

They aim at us and we all freeze, ready to run, caught between saving our lives and the lives of everyone else, unable to shoot back because of the explosives we’re holding in our hands. But then there’s shots to my right and Miles and Monroe come flying in and take them out and we all tear at the barricade like it’s ice and we’re underneath the water running out of oxygen, and Miles shoves us through and yells “Go!” as he turns to face another group of Patriots.

We leap over the bodies of the Patriots, and I smash a neutralizer on the floor. The mist spirals up and _is it okay to breath this stuff in either?_ but there’s no time to think about that.

I can’t see a single thing with the yellow mustard gas and the white powder from our bombs and the sunlight running through all of it, like some sick, twisted version of fairy dust. We just keep lighting and throwing and hoping that this is working. Another group on gas duty runs into the room with a duffel bag full of bombs, and we don’t even pause to look, just light and throw and light and throw. _Please let this work please let this work mom is down there grandpa is down there Alani and Teddi are down there Ryan and Delaney and Hayden and Alyssa and Ramona and Desmond and George and Ilana and Winona_ I just keep naming everyone I can think of, even people I knew for an hour, met for one second, like that’ll somehow keep them safe.

“HEY!” I hear the loudest yell of my life and look down to see Alani bellowing at me. _She’s alive_. Does that mean this is working? “Throw some down! We have an idea!” I scan the green expanse of lawn, that’s somehow still green after all this, wondering what the hell the idea is. Carter’s staring out at something with narrowed eyes, and then they brighten with understanding and he takes what’s left of the duffel bag and tosses it out the window. I can hear Alani’s “Oof!” from here as she catches it, and I watch her run to a spot in the ground where Teddi’s frantically digging at something with a few other rebels. They all have their faces covered but they’re alive.

_What are they doing?_ It’s not just them. There’s about a third of the rebels on their knees on the ground, scrabbling at the dirt, not caring about the rest of the battle still raging around them, both sides shooting even as they run from the yellow cloud. I throw my last bomb and lean out the window, as far as I can get without falling. The mustard gas isn’t even halfway across the first lawn but it’s spreading too fast.

I see Mom about six hundred feet away, by one of the control hatches in the ground or whatever it is. She and two other rebels put their whole weight into opening the hatch, and she takes another duffel bag from the ground and turns it upside down. Buckets of white powder cascade into the hole. She drops a flare into the well and slams the hatch shut, and she turns and lights another flare. I see another one light up in the huge field behind her, and another, and another, all the way to a well we found.

_What are they doing?!!?!?_ The gas has almost reached the barrier of neutralized space and I can’t watch. I want to run towards her but I can’t get to her, with this much space between us. My hands are clutching the windowsill so hard they break it. Then she takes a shovel and whacks the exposed pipe. Around her, everyone else does the same. Whatever they used to pipe the water was clearly scrap metal, so it’s corrugated and worn and rusted, and I see cracks forming in it even with the first hit. Something makes the ground rumble, but I don’t see or hear any explosions. The battlefield echoes with clangs that almost sound musical, until I hear a crack instead, and the whole pipeline bursts. Cloudy, white-gray water erupts from the ground like a volcano, from the steps of the White House to as far as I can see. It shoots up ten feet, twenty, twenty-five, and rains down in buckets. I can taste the river and iron from the pipes and something acrid and bitter, but to me, it’s as good as rain.


	20. Then Spoke the Thunder (Rachel)

I’m standing with the shovel in one hand, staring at the sky. I can’t believe that worked. _I can’t believe that worked._ I’m laughing and I don’t know why, and all around me, everyone stops fighting in shock and looks around in absolute, utter confusion. I can almost see the mustard gas fall under the rain, the noxious yellow smoke dissipating or just vanishing under the murky waterfall.

I see Charlie from the second-story window, her mouth open in amazement that mirrors mine. She looks right at me and I can see her grin from all the way over here. Through the windows, people are yelling and waving their arms and cheering.

This is the dumbest, least scientifically plausible thing I’ve ever done, and I can’t believe it worked. We were about a quarter mile from the White House when someone tripped over part of the exposed pipeline. One of the defectors told us that Davis had a pipe installed for running water. Since it’s from the Basin, you can’t drink it, but you can wash your hands or boil it or whatever. Why, you may ask? Because he wanted to. To show that he could. We all shared a moment of deeper disgust for a man who would waste time and resources on something so shallow. And then one of the rebels came sprinting across the field, saying she’d seen Patriots with masks disappear somewhere in the maze of the White House. And then I had an idea.

The neutralizer we made was good for short range, but if they had as much as we thought they did, it wouldn’t be enough. Everyone looked at me like I was insane when I dropped to the ground and started digging. I didn’t even know if this would work. It’s a whole bunch of basic chemistry thrown together. But sometimes the answers are staring you right in the face. I explained my idea between breaths as I tore at the dirt. Thankfully, the pipe was only half a foot down. They all still looked at me like I was crazy, but Cortez was there, and she was listening. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, memories of the nukes, her fight to keep the rest of Georgia alive, torn between despair at this new weapon and a possibility of stopping it this time.

“Do it.” she said, nodding once at me. And they all listened. I told someone to get to the White House, find the line, and turn the valve off, and someone else to run to the main lock by the shore and turn the pressure all the way up. The rest of us dug like our lives depended on it, which it did. I knew that the powder would mix well enough with the water to combat the mustard gas, if we could get the pressure right. _At the very least_ , some cynical voice reminded me, _the water will help the burns and the breathing_. 

I ignored that voice and slammed the shovel down with everything I had. I could feel the crack before I saw it—a change in the resistance of the metal, a louder rumbling beneath my feet—and then it exploded into a wave, fountained up and drenched us all, dispelling the yellow smog as the sun poured over the horizon.

I wipe the water out of my eyes and start searching for wounded, the ground quickly turning to mud beneath my feet. The water pressure lessens ever so slightly, and I catch sight of Dad. The next half an hour isn’t real for me—all that’s there is bandages and gauze, burn ointment and needles and a growing collection of bullets in the field, blood and bodily fluids and cries of pain and darting eyes and too many hands to count reaching for mine. I perform my duties with something like the clinical detachment of a surgeon, which I guess I am now. We help one and then move on to the next as quick as we can, stopping only to see where the other medical teams are and who needs help now. The only thing that threatens to break me is the kids—younger rebels and Patriots who, to my eyes, don’t seem ready for this at all. Somehow, we save most. We lose a few. This wasn’t a straight massacre; it was a last-ditch effort. People were trying to survive, not kill. Most of the injuries aren’t life threatening, just scarring. Bullets shot at random to try and get someone to stop moving or to stay out of your way.

Charlie’s safe. I don’t see Miles. Alani and Teddi aren’t here either. Allen’s down with a bullet to the leg and Garza’s got a broken arm. Ramona’s eye nearly got taken out, but she’ll be fine. I stand up and stretch when it looks like we’re all done, my back aching from bending down for so long.

“Good job, Rachel,” Dad says quietly. “We were fast enough to save most of them.” I nod, taking in our mud-covered legs and our blood-covered hands. We wash off as best we can in the trickle still coming from the pipes. Our job is done for now. The ambulance units’ll take it from here. They set up one of the kitchens for the surgeons in our army, for anyone who needs major attention. Someone found a well (the drinkable kind), and several people are bringing around buckets of water. I take it gratefully. Dad mutters, “This is an excellent way to share the next virus,” but he drinks nonetheless. We’re all too tired and too glad to be alive.

There’s a commotion and some yelling, and I turn towards the sound, knowing I should care because it might mean danger, but also too exhausted to really give a shit. And then I’m awake, because Miles is shoving Davis out of the wrecked doors of the White House, surrounded by Bas and a company of armed rebels.

Dad and I hurry over to where a small crowd is gathering now, pushed back by the guards. I think someone’s about to take a swing at him when Cortez appears, motioning at everyone to get back. “You can all heckle him later. Now’s not the time. Go help move the wounded or the dead.” People disperse at her command, still glancing over their shoulders.

Miles sees me and the rush of relief I feel when he meets my eyes is almost tangible. _We got him._ It’s over. And we’re alive.

“I think _this_ belongs to you,” Miles says to Allen, who’s hobbling over supported by a soldier. Davis doesn’t say anything, but he looks smug still. That worries me. He looks around at us all, and although he doesn’t flinch when he sees me, the arrogance on his face drops for half a second. _Good_. He built this around the chaos and loss of control after the blackout. He depended on it—people following him, hiding behind the anarchy. I know who he was before and what he did.

“Where’re the rest of the cadets?” Garza shoulder his way forward to stand directly in front of Davis. _Damn_. He’s right. Most of these Patriots were adults. There are no cadets in D.C.

“They’re heading towards the bay,” someone in the crowd speaks out. We all turn towards a man in Patriot uniform, looking weary and ashamed. “Last-ditch effort. They’re supposed to escape to Delaware. If you send a group now, you can catch them. They only left about three hours ago.” He looks down. “My kid’s there.” I want to say something to him, but I don’t know what.

Garza barks orders and in under a minute, a squadron’s assembled and heading off towards the bay. I’m still processing that information and I know Miles is trying to figure out if it’s a trap or not. I’m hoping for a minute to catch my breath, but as usual, we don’t get that. There’s a loud crash from the East Wing and a group of rebels exits the east wing with struggling figures with between them.

As they get closer, I realize one of them’s a kid and my heart drops so fast I feel it. I’m about to start yelling at the man holding the kid because he’s pushing him like he’s a criminal, when the boy twists free and runs for us. He heads right for Davis and my brain catches up so late I should probably check myself for a concussion later. _That’s Davis’s grandson_. Davis catches him and comforts him and for a second, I think he actually cares about something. But no, that’s too optimistic. Davis turns the kid around like a shield in front of him, holding him so tightly that the boy winces.

We all waver between stepping closer and backing away. The sight of a five-year-old in the middle of all this carnage is throwing us all off, and I don’t know what Davis will do. I should have recognized that look in his eyes. Desperation. He’s unhinged. We’re all looking at each other, not sure what to do, because it’s clear from Davis’s body language that he _will_ use the kid against us. He’s backing up and Miles moves towards him. Davis pauses and lifts the kid up higher, and we all freeze. He has a knife in his hand, small as a letter opener and I wonder if he had that on him or if it was on the kid this whole time.

“You’re gonna let me and my grandson walk out of here,” he says. “Or I will hurt him.” Even Bas doesn’t move. Maybe he has an age limit on the kids he will consider an enemy. Or maybe this is as unconscionable to him as it is to me. I’m completely frozen, trying to fathom this new low Davis has sunk to. The kid looks so confused and I can see he’s starting to understand the situation as he looks around the ruined grounds. I want to take him as far away as I can. Miles is locked on the kid, trying to figure out any way to get at him.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Davis bends down to tell his grandson. “We’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna get us both out of here.” The impassive void yawns inside of me, the anger that turns hard and cold as a black hole, and I’m outside of my body just watching this happen, like in a dream.

Davis is almost at one of our wagons and we’re all just slowly trailing him when something tells me to turn around. There’s a scuffle by the door of the East Wing, and I hear a shout and a gunshot and someone bursts out, racing towards us with something tucked under his arm. I realize what it is when Charlie yells something and Miles launches himself at the new threat. I lunge for Davis, taking advantage of the distraction, and then all hell breaks loose (again).


	21. Begin (Charlie)

Everyone around me is cheering and jumping into each other in celebration and reaching out for the water, but I’m still in shock, staring at Mom as she drops the shovel. She laughs in disbelief and I do too, and then it catches up to me what just happened, and I turn towards Gracie, who’s half-crying in relief, and Carter, who beams like we all just got a one hundred on a test. All the feeling rushes back into my body and I sit down on the edge of a barrel. But just for a second, because we have things to do. The hour rushes past in seconds. We search every inch of the White House and capture any remaining Patriots. I briefly see Mom and Grandpa on the field. I don’t see Miles, but I think he’s helping remove the dead from the field. He always does that—jobs that no one else wants to do. I see a few faces I recognize, but not anyone I know, and the relief that makes my throat tight is partly guilt too, as I pass people sobbing or sitting numbly next to people they cared about. I don’t _hide_ on the top floor of the White House exactly, but I get as far away from death as I can. Sometimes I see Mom or Miles or Aaron or me reflected in the heartbroken eyes and devastated expressions.

I’m helping destroy the remains of the neutralized mustard gas when Hill, Allen’s lieutenant, walks in. “Good job.” She addresses all of us but nods at me. “We’ll take it from here.” I smile at her. _Remember when they wanted to capture us?_ Now look at us. The terms “enemies” and “friends” basically have no meaning to me anymore. It’s just ‘whoever is trying to kill you right now’ and ‘whoever might try to kill you later.’

I find a door that’s not completely blocked by everyone else rushing in and out, and I’m stepping carefully over lots of broken glass towards it when I spot Alani and Teddi down the hallway. A wave of relief hits me, so big I think I’m gonna throw up _no wait that’s from inhaling the neutralizer_ and then something slams into me. My arms are around Alani before I fully realize it’s her, and a taller presence in my field of vision tells me Teddi’s here too.

“Hey,” he smiles almost shyly at me. Alani shakes her head at him and she grabs both of our hands like we’re all lifeboats in the ocean, talking so fast I can barely understand what she’s saying. “Didyouseethat?” I get in a nod before she’s off again. “Genius! Fucking genius!!! We saw you from the window, up there, throwing shit, and then the water happened, and I cannot _believe_ that worked, are you okay? Did you get hurt at all?” I’m checking them both for injuries, but they look fine, bruised and scratched but nothing life-threatening. “OhmygodCharlie your shoulder!” Alani’s trying to peel my bloody shirt away from the gash.

“It’s just a graze—”

“I don’t care, the medics are out there, I saw your mom and your grandfather, they’re fine, that needs to be cleaned—”

“Let her breath, ‘Lani.”

“ _You_ breathe.”

They make me laugh, even though it kind of hurts. I think I busted a rib.

Teddi takes my face in his hands and turns it gently, looking for cuts. I can’t meet his eyes. He looks down and his face furrows. “Your hands.”

I look down. “Oh. Yeah.” They’re kind of red. It’s definitely not more than a second-degree burn. Honestly it doesn’t even hurt that bad. Oh. Wait. Nope, it’s starting to sting. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I get for holding firebombs.”

“Saving our asses with firebombs,” Alani corrects. “Looking super _cool_ with firebombs.” She tugs us both towards the door. The lawns are completely ruined, and I think we’re all a little proud of that. Last time I looked out the window, everything seemed to be going okay. The wounded were pretty much all cleaned up or in surgery. There were platoons of rebels herding Patriots to the nearest secure building. The generals sent half the army in a ten-mile-radius sweep for any Patriots or civilians. The usual cleanup. Except one thing is different now: no one is moving. And Davis isn’t under guard. Everyone looks panicked cause he has a kid with him, and they’re slowly retreating towards the closest wagon. _Shit_. That’s gotta be his grandson. _But what’s he doing…?_ It hits me and I rock back on my feet.

There’s a crash and a yell from the East Wing and Alani jumps, nearly knocking Teddi off the steps as we automatically duck backwards into the relative protection of the building. A crazy-looking Patriot runs out, carrying something. He’s headed towards the group of generals, Allen, Cortez, and Garza. Everyone’s watching him and it’s like slow motion. I only understand what it is when I see Miles tackle the dude. Mom goes for the kid. Miles and the Patriot go down, rolling around and trying to get a punch in. Something instinctive alerts me to my left, and I see some guy I don’t recognize off to the side. It looks like he’s holding the world’s oldest watch, one of those windup ones. His mouth is moving. I can’t hear him, but I think… It hits me. He’s counting down. That’s not a manually triggered bomb. There’s a fuse in there somewhere. They timed it.

I scream, “Miles!” and tap my wrist in the worldwide signal for “time.” Thank god he understands, and so does Monroe, who jumps on the Patriot as Miles snatches up the bomb. I’m down the stairs before I make the decision to do that. “Get him!” I yell behind me, hoping Teddi and Alani will know who I mean. Miles is running towards the South Lawn, away from the group, away from the few remaining soldiers, away from the grieving. I don’t even feel my feet on the ground as I race after him. He hurls the bomb as far as he can, towards the Washington Monument and over one of the dried-up fountains , ones that remind me of an old swimming pool I was tied up at the bottom of once, and I throw myself into him, my momentum sending us falling into the pool and under the blast radius as the bomb blows sky-high.

Plaster and cement and stone chips and dirt and who knows what else rains down around us and I do my best to cover my eyes and mouth. Eventually, we both cautiously uncurl and roll on to our backs. Behind me, I can see the monument as it turns gold from the sun, like it’s being painted.

“Charlie…” Miles wheezes. “That was dumb. Also,” he grimaces. “Ow.”

“Yeah, but…” I cough out. “I saved your dumb ass. You were— totally – just gonna— stand there, weren’t you?”

“In my defense… I wasn’t really thinking… past get the bomb away.” He collapses back on the ground.

I groan dramatically and loudly as I roll to my side and use the fountain edge to pull myself up. I stick my arm out and wave, and then literally drag myself out. “Beat you.” I gasp at Miles.

“Yeah, but,” he shimmies up and out. “Who got the President?” I flip him off and help him to his feet, and we stagger across the lawn through the settling dust. I flashback of the last time Miles and I were in an explosion together. I don’t know if that’s impressive or concerning that there’s more than one. I’m going with awesome. Mom is definitely not.

Mom, Grandpa, Teddi, and Alani get to us first. I let myself be fussed over because frankly, I’m too tired to resist and I can’t hear yet out of my right ear so I can just ignore them anyway. I’m pretty much fine (fine meaning now _new_ significant injuries). Miles on the other hand, is a little scorched, just on his arm and his side from the blast. Mom bandages up my hands and Miles, and we make our way back to the steps. A few Rangers are leading Davis away, along with the two kamikaze Patriots. Davis actually tied up now. His grandkid is practically hiding in the bushes with two rebels sitting guard beside him, and Mom bends down near him.

“Hey,” she says gently. “That was pretty scary, huh?” He just looks at her with eyes so far past frightened they’re almost empty. “I’m sorry you were in the middle of that. My name’s Rachel. What’s yours?” He still doesn’t move, just pants like an animal in a trap. But he’s looking at her, so that’s a start. He leans towards her voice a little, like he recognizes a parent even if it’s not his. The only thing I can think is _how_ dare _Davis put a kid in all this_. I see Mom fight back tears, and then it hits me that he probably looks a bit like Danny when he was little. His breaths start to slow as she looks him in the eyes, reassuringly, so he knows there’s someone there to protect him.

A group of soldiers are shoving more people out of the East Wing. One of them in particular looks panicked, yelling at them and looking around frantically. She spots us and even though she can’t see the kid, she must know he’s over here, because she screams “Charlie!” and tears loose from the soldier’s grip. I startle. _He has my name._

The kid doesn’t leave his hiding spot, but he clings to her like he’s trying to disappear. “Shhh,” she murmurs. “You’re safe now. I’m so sorry I lost you. I’m here now.”

Garza clears his throat slightly awkwardly, and the woman turns to look at him. “I’m his aunt. Ava. His mother was my best friend.” She doesn’t look away even though I can see how much heartbreak she’s still in. “They—his parents— died of typhus during the first outbreak. Davis took him. I stayed with him.” She refuses to even look in Davis’s direction. I don’t think she’s scared of him, exactly. I just don’t think he’s important enough to her to register on her radar. Respect. I’d’ve punched him by now. But I don’t think she wants Charlie to see any more violence.

“Okay, let’s get clear,” Allen says, indicating the few of us left. “Finish sweeping the area. In case any more bomb-happy bastards come back.” He looks at Garza, and they both seem as disoriented as I feel. “Tell everyone to pick a house. They’re evacuated anyway. Tell everyone… good job.” He sort of looks into the distance, like he walked into a room and can’t remember what for. The runners nod and head off in different directions to pass along the message.

And that’s that. We’re done. I look around at the parks, the half-demolished White House, the lines of struggle and scars in the dirt, the rest of the troops trudging away and leaning on each other; I listen to the other wagons rolling up with the rest of the camp, the cries of the wounded or the grieving, the ringing in my ears, the harsh, fast breathing of those around me; I smell gunpowder and smoke and chemicals, water, dirt, iron; I feel every sting and cut on my body, my hands still in fists, Alani’s hand on my arm, an annoying rock in my boot, the weight of what we just did, everything softened or sharpened by the light of the sun. We’ve been slogging day through day for so long, one task after the other, one mission after the other, that I lost track of time as everything narrowed down to one second of survival or escape after another. This—this is the end of that. _Is this what beginnings feel like?_ Walking out of a dark house right into the sun, not knowing you would even have one. Painful, but welcome. _What do we do now?_


	22. Putting the Pieces Back Together (Miles)

[August 2nd-11th, 2029]

The next week is a blur. I don’t think I could tell you what happened if I tried. We capture the remaining Patriots in the area. The residents of D.C. slowly trickle back in. The teams bring the rest of the cadets in. We stick them in holding in the heavily-guarded PD building until we can figure out how to un-brainwash them. We clean up. Rubble, bodies, whole buildings, you name it. We have funerals. We defuse bombs and neutralize mustard gas. We have meetings. We cautiously move into houses, and every night there’s an army of candles and lanterns burning in the windows. We send out messengers, to the other nations and to the previous occupants of D.C. We fix the water supply, which had been damaged in some explosion or another. We stick to the suburban areas cause we all remember the cages of the cities and high rises. We rebuild. We reuse what we can and burn the rest. We put out fires and smoldering embers. We start gardens. We brainstorm. We strategize. We try and figure out what the hell to do next.

No one knows. We were pretty sure we’d make it this far, but there’s only so much planning you can do. And there’s not many historical references for this. We’re back to having no central government, which is fine, but we have to put someone here. We gotta figure out housing. We’re gonna have to send troops to the ex-Monroe Republic and see who or what’s up there. My suspicion is the remaining Patriot officials. What do we tell the rest of the country? What do we do with this alliance?

I’m going on a five-day headache when Rachel pops up with the world’s oldest aspirin. I take it anyway. “If it kills me,” I tell her. “Then I won’t have a headache. Where’d you even find this?”

“You don’t wanna know.” We walk down the always-busy street, taking advantage of a very rare break. We haven’t talked much, but there’s too many things to do and say that saying them all is redundant now. Mostly we just collapse next to each other in bed every night. We end up curled up together in the morning.

We pass Aaron herding kids into helping fix an aqueduct. He recites a lesson from memory to them every day, math, science, you name it. Sometimes Priscilla helps him. Rachel even did one. I think they’re trying to distract the kids from all this destruction. Aaron makes a face at us but we both know he actually loves it. I think he’s afraid of all this knowledge vanishing. Me, I’m more afraid of _us_ vanishing, but it’s good to take on both. We pass Priscilla helping build a fence for a garden, Hayden moving part of a collapsed house from another collapsed house, the hospital where Gene’s checking on patients, Cortez leading plow horses through a patch of grass. I don’t know what the Patriots did for food before this, but they have a suspicious lack of gardens. Probably stole from anyone they didn’t like, or maybe that’s what’s in the Republic territory now. Anyway, we had the handful of biologists and chemists and whatever-ists check the water and the soil, so we know it’s not poisoned or anything.

We wander to the river, where we spot Charlie with her lightly bandaged hands on a horse being carefully led by Alani across one of the makeshift bridges, followed by Teddi who’s making sure the wagon full of logs and scrap metal stays on the path. They must’ve gone scavenging. I think that’s the dumb horse Alani saved too. Teddi sees us and waves, and we wait for them. The horse splashes us as it crosses the bank. Charlie’s face when she sees Rachel and I, a grin like the Cheshire cat. I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to make our lives difficult, but that’s what kids are supposed to do so I’ll allow it. I roll my eyes at her, and Rachel gives her a look, both of which cause absolutely no chagrin on Charlie’s part whatsoever. We help the three of them cross and make our way back into the city, and I feel like I’m living someone else’s life. The sun, the breeze, the quiet; Rachel’s hair like the sunlight and Charlie looking watchfully ahead, Alani making noises to the horse and Teddi with his eyes closed, the first peaceful expression I’ve seen in days— all of these things are pulled out of my senses and magnified. And nothing’s trying to kill us. I keep expecting something to jump out, or someone to try and shoot us. It feels like we’re in a different world. I would call it perfect except for these damn itchy bandages. Almost a different world, then. But, right on cue, I hear yelling and a window being broken as we reach the first rows of houses, and just like that I’m back.

Someone’s making a whole-ass ruckus outside of one of the jails (Jail equals any building with a concrete, sturdy, and one-entry-one exit basement). He’s being wrestled out the door, but he’s already taken down two rebels. He’s got blood on a knife and for a second, I think it’s our guys’, but they roll to their feet and shake themselves off.

“Some idiot thought he could go get revenge on the Patriots,” Evan says. He used to be an auto mechanic. He’s one of our unofficial cops or peacekeepers (haven’t decided on a name that doesn’t sound too overbearing or incredibly dumb yet), probably because he’s super tough-looking. He’s got a wicked cut on his arm. “It’s fine,” he says as Rachel goes to look at it. “This one caught us by surprise.”

Several rebels drag the dude to his feet and cuff him, and only then do I see who it is: Tom Neville.

It’s fun when ghosts from your past show up. It’s kind of like simultaneously being punched in the stomach and having icy water thrown on you. A great time.

I take a glance at Charlie, who’s frozen and kinda looks like she’s about to fall off the horse. She probably hoped she’d never have to see him again. I wonder how much she’s told Alani and Teddi, cause they’ve moved closer and around her, or if they just see her panic, and I feel a sudden surge of gratitude for them. _The kids are alright_. Which of course makes me think of Jason, who was coming back around, and all the other kids we lost, even the ones who’re still here, cause you can’t be a kid for long in a world like this, and _whoa there focus please feelings later_.

Neville spits blood on the ground and glares at us. He looks terrible. “You look terrible,” I say. “Worse than usual.”

He laughs in that creepy, humorless way. “You would be too, if you spent the last few months hunting down your son’s killers.”

I _feel_ , more than see, Charlie flinch. Iris, one of the California soldiers, comes out of the jail. “He got two Patriots,” she says grimly. “Knifed another one, but he’ll live. Our guys have some serious knocks to the head, but they’ll be alright.”

“Well, at least we know where those reports were coming from,” Green, Cortez’s second, says sardonically. “We’ve got a few messengers who’ve reported dead Patriots. Just on the sides of roads. A trail all the way into ex-Republic territory.” The image is pretty horrifying, but what else would we expect from Neville? The unstable look in his eyes makes me think he’s even less reasonable than usual.

“What would you have done?” he asks. “They killed my son.” He looks directly at Charlie and I have to stop myself from trying to kill him. He speaks slowly, enunciating every word. “They _took_ him from me. They made him into _their_ weapon. They took my son, my wife… I’m only returning the favor.”

“You and everyone else,” Cortez marches up to him, radiating fury. Someone must’ve run and got her. She makes Neville to look at her, just with the force of her voice. “Guess what? You’re not special. They took something from all of us. They took everything from all of us. You don’t get to be the judge and the jury and the executioner. You’re not the only one who lives here. We’re trying to make this fucked-up country something we can live in again, and that means finding out the truth. That means due process. Yes, even them.” She doesn’t let him get a word in. “You don’t know who did what and why. You don’t know who was trapped or lied to or what else. If you want revenge, start by holding the right people accountable. Lock him up.” The last part’s directed at the guards. “Away from them.” Meaning Patriots. “Leave him there until we figure out what to do with him. I want a four-person guard at all times.” She waves them away, and I see that she’s not more than ten years older than Charlie. So she was, what, ten tops when the power went out? I can see why Georgia followed her.

We’re all still staring at her as they take Neville away, stunned into silence and respect by her torrent of words. Her mouth turns up in something like a smile and she waves us away too. “Alright, back to work, spectacle’s over.”

We all let out a collective breath, like time stopped and now it started moving again, and Charlie half-slides, half-falls off the horse. Rachel looks at her like she wants to wrap her up, so she won’t ever face this again—the world, her past, things she’s done for survival. I wish… I don’t know what I wish. I haven’t wished for much in a while. At least, not besides _I hope this dumb plan works_. Didn’t have time. But now there’s time to wish for more and I don’t know what to do with it.

We all start moving again, cause that’s what we do. Move, fight something, move again, keep moving. Rachel squeezes my hand, and I know I got at least one thing I wished for.


	23. Jasper (Rachel)

[August 13th, 2029]

I step out of the doorway and into the late-August sun, the shadow of one of the old dorms of what used to be Georgetown University falling behind me. The irony that we’re holding the remaining cadets in what used to be a college will never escape me. One way or another, they’ve all come back to us, from their parents’ or friends’ or strangers’ urgings, or because they know the Patriots lost. I wish for the zillionth time that I could do an MRI and compare brain scans. I wish I knew what exactly the Patriots _did_ to them so I could undo all of it. But it seems like the brainwashing was connected directly _to_ the Patriots. Once the cadets saw the leaderless and defeated soldiers, they had no orders. No commander. Their training as Patriots isn’t relevant anymore, and what I see in their eyes now isn’t so much malice as confusion without an objective. That was the flaw in the plan: they were only tools. With no one to use the tools, they won’t function. At least, that’s my best guess.

I nod at Zahra and Will, the two front-door guards. They acknowledge me and let me pass. I’ve been here nearly every day since we won (the word “won” still tastes strange on my tongue, like an apple that’s one day away from going bad), trying to rehabilitate the more traumatized cadets. We’re housing the ones with no family or friends in the area here. I didn’t want guards, because they’re not the enemy, but there was too much contention, so guards it was. If everyone could see them though, they’d know. They’re just as broken as the rest of us. They have memories that haunt them. And they’ll stay with me for the rest of my life. Barry, all the way from Wyoming, broke down in my arms. Samantha, who didn’t even remember where she was from at first, went into shock. The youngest was fourteen. The oldest was twenty-four. All of them ripped from their homes, their memories, even if they thought they went willingly the first time. When someone who you learn is a myth, a legend from another time, reappears and says they’re here to help you, how could you not believe them?

The hardest to get are the isolated ones, the ones who lost their parents and families, the ones who were already on the brink to begin with. The ones who were already more like soldiers than children. But I’m not giving up on them. I promised.

I’ve been trying to reach a girl named Kaja, a few years younger than Charlie. What worries me is the gaps in some kids’ memories. I don’t know if that’s from the brainwashing or earlier trauma. Some days I wish I’d been a different kind of doctor. Kaja’s starting to open up to me and it kills me that we’ll have to leave them soon. What I’ve found is the kids are mostly just lost. A group of former psychologists and therapists and anyone in related fields (because we’re really grasping at straws here) figured the best way to snap them out of it is to talk to them. About us. About the mistakes we’ve made so they know they’re not alone. About the world they may or may not remember. Engage them. With stories. With art. With food. With music. Whatever we can think of to make them remember they’re human.

It feels terrifying to me, so I can’t imagine how it feels for them. Even though we’re in a school, sometimes it feels like a psych ward. Maybe when this is done, we can make it a school again.

I’m lost in thoughts of the future, and the present, and the past all tangled together in one jumble of a puzzle I can’t figure out, when I hear Charlie call. Judging by the state of her, she looks like she came from one of the well sites, where we’re digging deeper to try and increase the city’s water supply. 

“Any luck?” she asks, loping up beside me.

I shake my head back and forth ambivalently. “They just need time. And stability. And people they recognize. And trained therapists.”

“That’s asking a lot, Mom,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, time AND stability?”

I give her a sidelong look. “Did you get that sarcasm from me?”

“Defense mechanism. You know a lot about those.”

“I brought you in to this world and I can take you right back out of it.”

“Preeeetty sure I’m faster than you.”

“But not smarter.”

She grins at me and it feels good to have this, banter without imminent threats hanging over our heads. We’re heading for the Naval Observatory, which we’ve utilized as one of our bases. We’re walking on Massachusetts Ave and I realize Charlie’s never been anywhere near Massachusetts. Seventeen years later, and the thought still blows my mind.

We’ve hit the drive that encircles the whole complex when I hear something that sounds suspiciously like a bark. We both freeze. Pets weren’t really the first thing on anyone’s mind after the blackout, so what’s left is usually attack dogs or feral ones. Occasionally someone still has a pet dog, but most of them ran off. Some mated with wolves or coyotes and now we have wolfdogs, so that’s just great. All of this means we’re as quiet as possible as we steal towards the noise, which would be any rational person’s last course of action.

Charlie points towards an old maintenance building. Sitting on the ground is Ava, and behind her, the other Charlie. Dodging around them is a dog. Looks like a shepherd of some sort. They’re just sitting there calmly, watching the dog, holding out a handful of jerky. I notice that Ava always puts herself between Charlie and the dog. As we watch, the dog shuffles closer and almost reaches for the food. It repeats this dance a few times, then decides that the humans aren’t a threat, and snatches the jerky from Ava’s hand. It looks at them suspiciously as it bolts it down, like it expects them to take it away. Ava drops onto her hands and knees and _my_ stomach drops. Her face is far too close for comfort. But the dog doesn’t move as Ava tilts her head back and forth and blinks slowly at it as she eases closer, saying something incomprehensible but soothing.

Charlie and I are on the edge of our seats. Little Charlie spots us and he doesn’t wave, but he does sit up a bit. I freeze, but the dog’s still focused on Ava. She’s less than a foot from it and my heart is in my mouth. Our last few dog encounters haven’t been great, to say the least. But Ava gets closer and closer, angling herself away from the dog, who’s sniffing around her. Finally, it touches her ever so gently with its nose, and she grins and lets it smell her hands. She turns her head towards us, and I realize she _did_ know we were there.

“Come on over,” she calls softly. “But slowly. And bend down.” We must look absolutely ridiculous, crouching on the ground as we move carefully closer. The dog raises its head and growls once, but Ava calms it. “Shhh. It’s okay. They’re good.” She reaches out behind her and pulls my Charlie down next to her. “See? Friends.” I take a seat on her other side, next to her Charlie, and the dog sniffs us cautiously before deciding that jerky is a better use of its time.

“Wh— Where did you learn how to do that?” my Charlie asks.

“My parents bred and trained purebred dogs,” Ava makes a face at the memory, half-embarrassed, half-wistful. “I sound like such a snob saying that. We took other dogs as well, for training school. I was a certified handler from age eleven. It looks super weird, but it works. Didn’t think it would ever come in useful, but I was wrong.” She squeezes her Charlie’s hand, and he beams brighter than I ever thought he could as he carefully holds out another treat. He’s already so different than the kid I met a week and a half ago. My Charlie looks just as delighted, and I remember she’s probably never had a pet since she was five. “We spotted her a few days ago and we’ve been trying to catch her ever since. You two stumbled on our lucky day.”

Ava turns to little Charlie. “Charlie, do you remember Rachel and Charlie?” she asks him. His eyes darken a little as he recalls the circumstances under which we met, but I think he knows that we’re on his side even if he doesn’t understand, because he relaxes and gives me a small smile. “He hasn’t said much yet,” Ava tells us, and I see the dark circles and worry in her eyes.

“I think she needs a name.” my Charlie says to him, meaning the dog. “Wanna help me name her?” He nods more enthusiastically, and Ava and I share a smile. The dog is totally carefree now, rolling around in the dirt like she’s known us for years. Young Charlie leans towards the dog and puts his face right next to hers and whispers “Jasper.” She seems to like that.

We don’t have a leash, but Jasper follows us to the Observatory, and morale is much higher after that.


	24. A World We Can Live In (Alani)

[August 14th, 2029]

Today’s been a good day so far and that makes me suspicious. Ava and kid Charlie found a dog yesterday, and I saw a few rehabilitated cadets walking around today and smiling, and some of them even started helping plant more stuff in the gardens for the spring, and Teddi didn’t have any nightmares, so yeah, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Which is why I’m super tense as I head for the Lincoln Memorial where the generals are gonna make an announcement. It’s also why I almost smack Charlie as she sneaks up and taps me on the other shoulder.

“Sorry.” She doesn’t look really sorry though. She falls into step beside me as we follow the other people winding their way through the streets. Everyone’s animated with anticipation, theorizing about what the announcement could be.

“What do you think it is?” I ask.

Charlie shrugs. “I don’t know, but if the announcement is one of them is actually secretly a Patriot, I’m gonna be _real_ pissed.”

I laugh. “You’re always so pessimistic.” She shoves me with her shoulder, and I shove her back, and then we both almost trip over Jasper, who’s bounding ahead of Ava, kid Charlie, and Rachel.

The National Mall is where the Washington Monument is. The enormous stretch of green lawn seems so artificial to me, all the straight lines and perfect corners, like someone tried to smash the city and nature together and it didn’t quite work. We gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which looks sort of like I’d imagine a Greek temple to look like. Things I remember about Lincoln: top hat and the Civil War. Things Charlie remembered: The Civil War didn’t end slavery. Which pretty much any not-white person can tell you just from life experience and family and cultural history—which pretty much anyone now could tell you— but it hits you differently when you think about the broken country we have now. I wonder if the blackout— my mind always stumbles here—what it did, what the world would look like. Dad would always tell me Hawai’i’s history, the colonization by Britain and America, the intertwined economies. How power—electrical power—technological power— was power. Power and technology and money and capital. And now we have none of that. And still people find ways to control each other. So are the—the— _shit what are they called again?_ —nanites, are they the oppressors? Did we just make another form of control through the technological control that already existed? These hazy memories and half-sparks of thought have been exploding in my mind since we got to D.C., and what I really want to do is ask Rachel, Aaron, and Priscilla about it, but I can’t exactly do that.

“…earth to Alani…. Alani…. Come in Alani…” Teddi’s voice fades into my consciousness and I realize he’s been standing at my side for the past minute. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I grin cheerfully up at him, shoving down the tangle of thoughts deep down. That’s the difference between us (well, one of them anyway): I try and always put on a happy face. Or else, I’ll fall down and never get up. Teddi always lets himself feel what he feels. I’ve always admired that about him. His eyes smile into mine, like they always do when he sees me, like we’re having our own private joke.

_Hey, do you think you could kiss him if you stood on your tiptoes?_ that little voice in my head with a line directly to my heart asks. _Hey, shut the fuck up_ , I reply. Teddi’s my oldest friend, and I won’t ruin our friendship because of hormones.

_Okay, kiss Charlie_ , the voice suggests. _STOP ITTTTT_ , I think loudly at my heart, which is going crazy right now, from a combination of nerves over this announcement and these dangerous thoughts.

Rachel’s looking at me weird. _Shit. Does she know? How could she know. Wait, know that_ I _know? Or know about feelings? Calm down. There’s no way she can know. Unless she made technology that gave her the ability to read minds. That’s unlikely though._ She’s laughing on the inside, I know it, cause that’s what Teddi looks like when he’s making fun of me silently. The sound of drums startles me out of my mental frenzy as we all look towards the front and hold our breaths. The three generals and the rest of the military leaders are lined up on the steps.

“Thank you for all gathering today.” Garza’s voice, while frequently demanding and strict, has always been a calming rumble to me. He sounds kind of like my uncle, who I haven’t seen since I left. “I know it’s been a hectic two weeks. But I never doubted the strength of this.” He looks over the whole crowd, and then stands aside to let Allen speak, and it gives me hope that this alliance is lasting longer than just the fighting.

“Across the country, our combined forces have been weeding out the Patriots, rescuing cadets, and freeing towns and cities,” Allen continues. He has to project really loud, but our crowd of a thousand is somehow quiet enough to hear. “This was a challenge we didn’t see coming. An enemy we didn’t know we had. One last blow from before the blackout. But we rooted it out, took hold of what is rightfully ours, and turned this group of nations into something united again.” He steps back to let Cortez finish, and I realize she’s not all that older than me. Someday soon, my generation is gonna have to take over this shitshow. She’s doing a bang-up job so far though, so maybe there’s hope yet. I can feel Teddi and Charlie leaning forward with me, even though all of our eyes are locked on Cortez, like the whole crowd is one being.

“This morning,” she says, something like a smile breaking though her words, “we received the final all-clear from our messengers across the country. The Patriots are officially vanquished. After our attack on D.C., they lost central organization and we were able to quickly retake any remaining areas. We did it. We won. Welcome to a new sunrise.” When she steps back, the cheers are louder than any explosion I’ve head. Probably because I’m standing in the middle of it, but I’m choosing to think it’s because what we are is more powerful than any explosion. What are we, you ask? Hope. Plain and simple.

Our victory echoes across the water behind us and fills the empty spaces of the city and reaches across the bay. We knew we were gonna win, but knowing it and hearing that it’s over are two very different things. Even though I know a lot of us don’t like loud noises, all the faces I see around me are elated, not afraid. This noise is not for breaking, it is for rebuilding. And for the first time in a long time, I truly, genuinely believe that I’ll see my mother again someday. That maybe someday we can visit Hawai’I, and all the places Teddi’s family is from, and all the pictures on Charlie’s postcards.

Everyone is hugging strangers and hitting each other on the back and I’ve never understood why we hit each other to celebrate like _I can’t contain all this emotion_ and generally melee-ing about and Rachel kisses Miles real quick _in public_ and we all see it, and Priscilla looks stronger than I’ve seen her since I’ve known her and even Aaron doesn’t look very cynical right now and Teddi is spinning me around and Charlie is catching me and everyone is a jumble of arms and cheers and celebrations but I don’t feel trapped, I feel like we’re horses in a race and we’ve just been let out of the gate, and I see kid Charlie and Ava at the front with Jasper jumping five feet in the air and Ava smiles at Garza and I think he flushes and looks away and I _scream_ and smack my friends and _oh yes that_ is _why we hit each other_ and they see it and we laugh riotously with our heads thrown back because that us just _perfect_ that one of the most stoic generals did _that_ and I haven’t felt like this in a long time but I think it’s what winning a school football game or the Olympics or the Triple Crown or something equally implausible now would feel like and I’ve always wanted to go to one of those except maybe this is even better.

I didn’t realize how much we’d all been waiting for this. Like a weight lifted off us all. Like we finally made a step forward in the darkness we’d been plunged into seventeen years ago, even if this went back further than that single day. It’s still a win. It’s still something we can fight. And a common enemy brings people together just as well as a common goal. I’ve never liked that mentality, but I do like what comes after: the friendships, the caring, the feeling of someone having your back, the sight of something resembling a world we can live in.


	25. The Truth (Miles)

[August 16th, 2029]

We’re all nervous, I can tell. Charlie’s keeps looking around, like she’s scanning for threats. Aaron’s trying to calm his breathing. Priscilla’s twisting a loose thread in her hands. And Rachel’s staring at some space in the middle distance, still as a statue. This is her worried-spaced-out-stare, which is different than her deep-thinking-stare, which is different than her in-shock-stare, which is something I never want to see again. I try not think of those days after the bombs, because it felt like the end of the world again. Except this time, we were around to see it happen. I can’t describe the horror in Rachel’s eyes, or the shattered look in Charlie’s, only that it felt like we got hit with a bomb too.

“Hey.” Rachel snaps me out of my own trance. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I straighten from where I was leaning against the wall. “We’re just gonna walk in and tell the three arguably most powerful people in the country right now that this whole fuck up is our fault. I’m great.” Rachel just looks pointedly down to my death grip on my sword hilt. “Ah.” I can’t help if I think this is a bad idea. We’ve been jumping from lie to lie for so long, I forget what I know and don’t. Rachel was the one who said we should do this. We were all ready to cut and run, as usual, but she stood and said we had to tell them. “Really?” I said. “ _Now_ you wanna talk about ethics?” But something… _sighed_ in relief in all of us. Finally, we didn’t have to run or lie. Let guilt drive us away. “We owe them,” Charlie said, looking like she’d rather say anything else. “They trusted us before.” Bas looked like he was gonna object but he actually kept his mouth shut for once. Maybe he finally wrapped his head around the idea that once either Rachel or Charlie get an idea in their heads, it’s not going anywhere. So here we are.

The door cracks open and we all jump. “Come on in,” Garza says with a nod of his head. The room’s a semi-circular office, decorated to look like a combination of old-timey astronomical and nautical instruments and modern tech. Well, used to be modern anyway. _Goddamit_. Buchannan’s here too. So is Allen, Cortez, Hill, and Tomaz, Cortez’s Lieutenant general. Buchannan stares at us like he’s the principal and we’re in trouble. I _know_ he’s gonna lord this over us. He’s gonna be like “I told you so” and I’m gonna have to not punch him. He’s suspected us of something since we got here. To be fair, he’s right. We only told them half the truth, leaving out the nanos and keeping the parts about Bas and finding the tower because Rachel knew Randall. That’s the trick—give them enough so they think they’ve got you backed in a corner, but keep the winning card in your hands.

Although in this case, it’s more like the losing card. We file in and line up, looking like we’re about to be executed by firing squad. Which we might be, if this goes bad. Ohhhh, this is such a bad idea. For the plan and for our lives. To be honest, I’d probably try to kill whoever’s fault this is too. So I _really_ hope these guys are in a listening mood.

“Alright.” Cortez raises her chin, looking like she knows something big’s coming. “What did you want to tell us?”

Rachel looks at me, and I can practically hear how fast her heart’s beating. The room feels too small, and Charlie’s shifting like she thinks we’re gonna have to run. The officers are starting to get concerned, I can tell, probably because we all look like we’re about to spill the biggest and most dangerous secret of our lives, which we are.

Rachel takes a deep breath. Charlie catches her eye and gives her a tiny smile, and I think about how fast we can change. Charlie used to be so angry—still is—but I think she’s understanding how choices work in a world like this. There’s no good answer. There’s no right or wrong. Sometimes you do the right thing. Usually you do the wrong thing. You screw people over. You lie. You survive. But every so often, there’s a chance to do more than that. We’re taking it.

“We know why the power went out.” Rachel says, and you can hear the breath leave the room. Decision made. She’s standing tall, like she’s ready to face them down. Like those seven words freed her from something. I feel a surge of pride so strong it kind of feels like I’m having a heart attack.

“Wh—” Garza is at a loss for words, which is a first for him. He clears his throat. “What do you mean?”

“You might want to sit down.” Priscilla says quietly. “This might take a while.”

They talk for an hour, Rachel, Aaron, and Priscilla, explaining how they built the nanites, and why, and what they did, and what they didn’t mean to do, and what happened, and what happened after the Tower, and what happened a few months ago, and what we’re gonna do about it. Me and Charlie break in occasionally only for a missed detail or two, but other than that, we stay silent. I realize how utterly batshit this must sound from other people’s perspective. It sounds almost unbelievable, except the story’s so wild it can’t be made up.

When they’re done, the generals are silent. My mind is racing. _Are they gonna arrest us or just kill us? Does this even count as treason since it was an accident and before these nations were even drawn? Will they blame Charlie for complicity? They can’t. She was like, three. What if they don’t let us go? Then we’re fucked. More so than usual._

“Hands down, Matheson,” Hill says wryly. Her voice is shaky but resolved. “We’re not gonna arrest you.” I realize I’ve been inching my sword out of the sheath and drop it back in.

Allen seems to have forgotten his wounded leg, cause he tries to take a step forward and braces himself on a desk. “All this time…” he says, almost wonderingly. “We knew you had something to do with it. But…I didn’t know. And you were right here.”

“Sorry we didn’t tell you,” Charlie says bluntly. “It just usually ends up really bad when we do. It’s not really safe for anyone to know.”

“We don’t even know how much the Patriots knew,” Aaron says. “Besides… a lot. More than we wanted them too. We’re still figuring that out.”

“So… your plan is to go back,” Cortez says slowly. “To the Wasteland… and… what? Stop the… nanites? From... brainwashing everyone?”

We all look at each other. “Yep. That’s about it.” Aaron nods.

“Do you even know how?” Tomaz questions. I can’t tell if their tone is judgmental, angry, or just confused.

“We’re working on it.” Rachel says.

Buchannan half-laughs, half-chokes. “You don’t _know_?”

“If I knew how, don’t you think I would’ve done it already?” Rachel snaps. Buchannan even looks slightly embarrassed. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “Sorry. No. But I have a few ideas. We just haven’t really gotten around to it yet.”

“We _have_ been on the run for two years.” Charlie adds helpfully. Or smart-assedly. Whichever.

“Noted.” Garza says dryly. “The question is, now what?” We all freeze. This is the moment we prepared for. Fight or flight. He paces a few steps, barely hampered by his arm in a sling. “To be honest, I’m not sure. I always imagine that whoever did… this,” he gestures around us. “Was someone horrible. Who wanted to do it. I didn’t think it would be a mistake.” He sounds distant, like he’s trying to gather his thoughts.

I glance over at Rachel. She’s stone-faced, taking this like she expects it or thinks she deserves it. Her eyes, though, hold a tidal wave.

“Hey.” Charlie steps forward. Her voice is low and I would say she looks dangerous if I hadn’t seen her blush whenever Alani or Teddi appear. “What’s done is done. If you wanna blame us, fine. But let us do this. My mom’s beat herself up enough. She’s carried this for _years_. My family’s died. People got hurt. It’s what Monroe wanted. It’s what the Patriots used. It took from us too. Don’t get me wrong, I’d want to punch the shit out of whoever did this too. But that’s not us. Not anymore. It them. The nanites. We got the Patriots. Let us get what’s left. We’ll win or we’ll die trying and you won’t have to worry about what to do with us.” She stands back, slightly in front of the rest of us, like she’s daring the officers to move.

Allen almost smiles. “Miss Matheson, you can relax. We’re not going to arrest the only people who can stop—” he pauses with a huge sigh. “—the next threat to humanity.”

Cortez shakes her head and starts forward, fire in her eyes to match Charlie’s. “You know what? It’s not your fault. We don’t always know where our actions’ll lead. You didn’t purposefully start a plague to control people. You didn’t drop a nuke. The ones before _or_ after the blackout. The world was gonna end eventually. Probably from climate change.”

“What were you, eight?” Garza mutters.

She shoots him a look. “Eleven. And even when I was eleven, I knew people had been doing shitty things, purposefully, since as long as humanity’s existed. If we want to be better, _we have to be better_. Let’s start by focusing on the real threats. Not our fellow survivors.” 

Well. I did not expect that.

Hill nods. “Agreed. We need to go forward, not backwards.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Buchannan says with a heavy sigh. “Agreed. At least we know _why_ now the Mathesons are so much trouble.” I restrain myself from giving him a smart salute, but Charlie doesn’t. Tomaz cracks up, a stress reaction, and the other officers smile or roll their eyes too, and some of the tension exhales out of the room.

Rachel is looking around in surprise. I know this was the last thing she expected. Forgiveness. Understanding. And I really doubt the entire word would react like this, but we did just go through a war with these people. At least we’re sometimes good at picking our leaders.

“When were you planning on leaving?” Garza asks brusquely. Back to business.

“Soon as we can,” Priscilla says. “It’s been quiet over there, but that usually means something worse is coming.”

“Do you need any backup?” Hill asks.

“No.” Rachel says firmly. “No one else has to risk anything more for this.”

“One condition,” Cortez interrupts, and we all look at her slightly panicked. “Take Neville. I don’t know what the fuck to do with him, and quite frankly, we have other people to worry about.” The other officers think this is a great idea, and we look at each other and half-laugh, not really thinking it’s funny, just ironic how we always end up with our past following us around.

“Fair enough,” Rachel says, with the barest hint of a smile.

We leave in two days, early morning. We’ll sneak back across the river. We can tell a few people, but only those we really trust. The rest’ll think we’re going back to Willoughby. We’ll avoid the main routes from California, Texas, and Georgia to here. We’re gonna try a few places where Rachel thinks there might be some useful tech or info, and then we’ll cross the Wasteland and find the nanites. And then, we’ll wing it.

We leave the office and head back down the hallway, half-expecting soldiers to jump out and yell “Surprise!” and haul our asses off to jail. Aaron lets out a breath. “That was… weird.” We all make noises of agreement.

“Is it weird to think this is a trap?” Priscilla asks wryly.

“Nah. Healthy paranoia is good.”

“Is that why you almost stabbed them back there?”

“Shut up, Charlie.”


	26. The River, Again (Charlie)

[August 18th, 2029]

I’m waiting by the river for Teddi and Alani. I’m almost more nervous about it than I was meeting the generals. I can’t stop my feet from moving and I keep rolling my shoulders like I’m gonna need to fight. _Why do I always want to fight?_ I dunno. That might be a question for later.

We’re pretty much all packed. Not that we really have anything _to_ pack. I left Mom and Miles to hash out some details. Priscilla went to finish the garden she’s been working on. She really loves gardening. I don’t even think Aaron knew that. He went to make arrangements for a school. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Grandpa went to check on the few patients still in the hospital, furious even though he knew what was coming. I’m not too ecstatic about it either, but what choice do we have? My hands are almost all the way healed and I keep flexing them, testing how far I can move them.

Teddi’s loping stride and Alani’s boundless energy break my stream of thoughts, which is rushing past me faster than the rapids. “What’s up?” Teddi’s frowning, like he already knows. He probably does. To be fair, we don’t really have secret meetings about good things.

Alani looks at me hard, and she knows, her eyes going wide with realization. “No!” she says, throwing herself at me. Teddi looks right into my eyes, telling me all the things he can’t explain out loud. I ignore the fact that his eyes take me somewhere far away, turning the end of summer into something timeless.

“I, uh, we talked to the generals,” I start, struggling find words. “We uh, told them, and uh—” I break off. How do I explain any of this? Ever?

“Damn it, Charlie.” Alani whispers. Her grip tightens and then she lets me go and steps back. “When?”

“Tomorrow. Morning.”

“Fuck.” Teddi exhales, aggressively kicking a rock across the water and surprising the both of us. The swear, not the rock. “I knew you had to go… but I didn’t really think… you know?”

I nod. “I can’t believe it either. Then again, I can’t believe a lot of things.” They look at me questioningly. “Well, for one, the generals actually believed us. They’re helping us. For another, we have been chasing this, some version of this, for two fucking years. It doesn’t feel real it might be over soon.” I take a shaky breath and laugh. _Can you imagine? Something that started before I was born._

“Who else knows?” Alani asks.

“You guys. Garza, Cortez, Allen, Hill, Tomaz, and Buchannan. My mom’s gonna tell Ava. Probably Hayden. Maybe Gracie and Carter. We’re not telling everyone, but… some of you should know… in case it… if we don’t come back…” I trail off. Either way, if this works or doesn’t, people should know. If the nanos come for them, maybe knowing what they are could help. Or if it works, they’ll know why.

“Get this,” I say, hating the distraught expressions on my friends’ faces and trying to lighten the mood. “We have to take Neville with us.”

“ _What_?!” Teddi and Alani chorus, confusion and amusement creeping into their voices. 

“Yeah. The generals don’t wanna deal with him, so we have to take him. Makes sense. Since it’s, uh,” my voice gets quiet. “Kinda my fault.”

“Don’t even start,” Alani says as Teddi shakes his head.

“Not your fault. The Patriots.”

“Can’t you let me feel guilty and self-absorbed for one second?”

They laugh. “See if you can just leave him there,” Alani says, chuckling. They don’t even know where we’re going. We’re keeping that part as on the down-low as we can, to try and minimize the possibility of anyone following. Hell, I don’t even know the whole plan. Mom said she’ll explain when we’re further away. Which means she either doesn’t want anyone overhearing or _she_ doesn’t even know yet.

The three of us stand silently, looking out at the water and around at the trees and the city and at each other.

Alani groans out a sigh and throws her arms around me again and mumbles into my hair. “Don’t even think about not coming back here. I still don’t understand ninety percent of what you said so I can’t be responsible for explaining it to everyone.”

I choke a laugh and nod, ignoring how the feeling of her words makes my skin tingle. Alani wiggles a hand out behind her and motions for Teddi to join in. Somehow, three people hugging isn’t awkward or difficult. If anything, it feels right.


	27. Said/Unsaid (Monroe)

I don’t know how, but I can tell something’s up before Miles even gets here. I’m pacing back and forth across the faded boards of the shitty run-down house I’m holed up in before he whistles from the woods to let me know he’s coming. I have my sword ready anyway.

Miles triple checks no one’s followed him before coming up the steps. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” he says, before he’s even all the way in the door.

“Thank god. If I had to stay in this shit hole one more day while you’re all over there…”

“Bas, you know how this works. They blame the last guy standing. You were the face of the Republic. Everyone still hates you.” Never mind the fact that half the reason we had enough intel on the White House was cause there were a few ex-Republic soldiers who were still loyal to me. I traded that for a chance to get at the Patriots. They didn’t like it, but what choice did they have? And if I died trying to get Davis, who cared? And now I’m stuck here across the river, waiting to move, find the robots, screw that, find Connor.

“Wow, _great_ talk, Miles.”

“Hey,” he spreads his hands in a _what-can-I-do?_ Gesture. “You know the rules to this game. We’re having a party tonight. General’s announced a night off from work. Said we all needed it. I think they need time to process everything.”

“You told ‘em?”

“Yeah. They took it surprisingly well. Except we have to take Neville with us.”

I bark a laugh. “Fantastic. It’ll be a fucking family road trip.”

“Yeah. One real fucked-up family.” We stand a little awkwardly for a second. “Anyway. If you want to get out of here tonight, just make sure no one sees you. Meet by the northwest bridge, the you first came across. Early morning. Don’t be late.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll set my alarm clock.”

And with that, he’s gone. I pack my bag and check all my weapons, still wondering, as I have been, why I didn’t just leave right after we won. _Did I waste too much time?_ But if I don’t have a strategy, I can’t find the nanites or Connor anyway. I don’t even know where he is. He could be anywhere. But I do know that I promised I’d keep him safe, and I’d give him an empire, and I can’t do that with the nanites around. I just hope he has enough common sense to stay the hell away from them.


	28. Phoenixes (Rachel)

Miles knocks and enters the room at the same time, closing the door behind him. We’re in a house nicer than any in Willoughby, with a view from all sides. Old habits die hard. “Bas is all set. Did you tell Ava?”

“You’re kind of defeating the purpose of knocking. And yes.” I didn’t think I’d be this upset over it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend besides Aaron. But I think Ava’s becoming my friend. And I’m going to miss her a lot. I forgot what it felt like to talk to people. We spent a lot of time together the past few weeks, trying to help her Charlie and the other kids caught in the crossfire, civilians and cadets. We kept the fight away from them as long as we could, but that was only a dream anyway. If you live in this world long enough, you’ll see it. I guess even in the pre-blackout, it would only be a matter of time, but this seems closer and more raw. Animalistic. Lawless. Anyway. 

Miles comes over to me and looks me in the eyes. “We’ll be back.” He says, and the determined conviction in his eyes almost makes me laugh. Not at him, just at his stubbornness.

“I know.” I say, and I rest my head against his for a moment. “Lemme check that one more time.” I’m already lifting up his shirt before he can protest. Which he has. Many times.

“Rachel…” He doesn’t even bother finishing that sentence, just sits down on the bed. I plunk down beside him victoriously. The burns are pretty much healed, and the wounds are all closed up. A tiny bit of inflammation, but no signs of infection. There weren’t any the last time I checked, but if we’re leaving tomorrow, I want us all in perfect shape. Well, as perfect as we ever are. So, just not visibly bleeding.

“You always forget to guard your left side,” I mumble, examining all the surrounding scars.

“In my defense, that was the hand Andover broke. I couldn’t move that arm for a while.”

A shudder runs through my mind, along with other memories I keep buried. It’s not so much the pain that torture causes. I can deal with physical wounds. It’s the psychological ones that get to me. The lack of autonomy. The assault. The feeling of being trapped. _But I’m here now, in this room, and my family is safe._ I take a deep breath and stand up. “All set.”

“Good, I was really worried there for a sec.” Miles launches himself up as well, and I realize how close we are. “You know, Rachel, if you wanted to get my shirt off, you coulda just asked.”

“Really?” I say, tilting my head. “I’ve been stitching you up for two years and that’s what you come up with.” I shake my head and kiss him before he can kiss me first, and smile at his surprise. “Beat you.” My heart feels like a hummingbird’s wings. It’s always like an electric shock, or a crack of thunder. Like something that I can reach for or feel but can’t quite keep hold of, just feel the echo of it in my bones.

“You know what I’m gonna miss?” Miles declares. “Sleeping on a real bed. Somehow rocks just aren’t as comfortable.” He looks at me with a playful grin and leans back and falls back onto the bed, pulling me with him, and I’m laughing at his antics and everything becomes slightly giddy and tinged with the color of afternoon sun as it all becomes my hands in his hands and both of us breathing, and the scent of wood and dust and around us is a different kind of electricity, and sometimes like now I don’t even miss the other kind because here we are with sparks lighting me up from the inside out and shivers dancing on his skin as fast as hummingbirds.


	29. Fireworks (Charlie)

[August 18th-19th, 2029]

Tonight, we’re having a celebration. The generals announced a night off, something I think we all need but didn’t expect to have. I’ve never had a party in my entire life, and I have no idea what to expect. I add “party” to the list of things I knew about but never experienced and never thought about until it happened. It’s a long and surprising list, what we stopped having because it wasn’t relevant or necessary to live. We used to have birthday parties, but that was like, three people. This is about a thousand.

We’re at the edge of the city, in one of the more suburban towns, near an old field because someone found fireworks, and it’s probably not a good idea to set those off near a ton of trees or houses. Everyone is out in the streets, drinking like it’s the end of the world, playing music on old abandoned instruments, setting off firecrackers, dancing. It’s utter madness and I think I like it. You can see so many stars. Anyone over thirty I talk to will tell me that before this, there’s no way you could even see one star in a city like this. So that’s one good thing, I guess? There’s a sort of hopeful-wistful-joyful-grieving thing breathing in the air, and it feels like we’ve stepped into a carnival or something. My mind gives me an image of an old book, red and black and white, with a circus tent etched into the colors. _Damn it Teddi, making me think about books_. I guess it’s a good thing though, recovering memories of reading every book we had in our old house at least three times each from sheer boredom, so I have some way to explain what all this is.

The idea of parties is weird to me, because parties implies that you’re celebrating something that has a future. I never really used to think about the future. It was always survival. We didn’t think we’d ever get anything back. Sure, I _wanted_ it. But I didn’t think it would happen. And now I have the chance to fix something. It feels like we’re on the edge of this cliff, waiting to jump or for a push. Waiting to see if we have the wings to do this.

I’m in some sort of dream, where I’m standing still and everyone is rushing around me, colors blurring into sounds and shadows and light. I’m slammed back into my body by my friends, who drag me forward to a slightly-less occupied corner. They are radiant, glowing, breathless and happy.

“What the hell even is this,” Alani says happily. “Is this real?” _I think I’ve found the rest of the stars._ I think they’re in her eyes.

“I think so,” I say. “I almost got run over by about twelve people who are really drunk already, so yeah, I think it’s real.”

Teddi runs his hand through his hair and I want to do the same. Nights like this, where reality is verging on the edge of a dream, make everything slightly insubstantial, especially your common sense.

Everything’s a blur, like I’m drunk, but I’m not, and I know because I’ve never felt like this in my life. It feels like adrenaline, but without the danger. I can almost _feel_ the energy of everyone around me, like it’s a tangible thing. We run through crowds and wave at people we know. Someone’s made flower crowns and leaf circlets and Alani makes us all get one and my knees almost buckle because she looks like a forest goddess or something. Teddi swoops down and plucks a kid from the crowd, lets her sit on his shoulders until we find her dad. The kid’s not scared, and Teddi’s smile is so sweet, my heart almost stops at the gentleness in his eyes. _Jeez, is this why they call it falling?_ The thought I won’t say lingers at the very edge of my mind, and this time, I let it. We pass Hayden and Alyssa, and Hayden’s drinking everyone under the table (no surprise). Aaron and Priscilla are sitting outside at a table of an old restaurant, peaceful and watching. We pass Gracie and Ryan and Delaney and Winona, more relaxed than I’ve ever seen them. I wave at Allen, who gives me the biggest smile. We pass Carter, slightly drunkenly arguing with a group of people who definitely used to be scientists too, because who else would be animatedly arguing about where the space program would’ve gone right now? We pass little Charlie with Jasper, who’s getting so much attention right now and loving it. Behind them is Ava and Garza, leaning against a wagon and talking. Alani full-out wolf-whistles at them, and the three of us duck fast and try and hide in the crowd while trying not to fall over in laughter. Cortez and Hill are sitting on top of a no-longer-needed barricade, and we wave at them too.

We pass Ramona and Ilana and George, who’re playing in a hastily-thrown-together band with old, found-by-luck instruments, and somehow, they sound great. Of course Alani wants to dance, so she drags me and Teddi into the circle, and I can’t tell you the last time I danced, but no one seems to care how bad you are or if you step on anyone’s foot. I don’t know the song, but it sounds carefree and completely superficial. I realize how few times in my life I’ve heard music, and I’ve never heard it like this.

We eventually make our way to the less-crowded part of the town, near the field where they’re setting up fireworks. No idea where they came from, or how old they are. No one cares. We lived through this battle! Twenty-year-old fireworks can’t kill us! Of course, Hayden is there. She’s handing out something called sparklers, and I tell my Teddi and Alani, “I’m gonna go get a few.”

“’Sup, Charlie?” Hayden is probably one of the most laid-back people I’ve ever met. She’s unconcerned and relaxed like she always is, holding fire on sticks growing shorter every second, except for her eyes. They’re some of the sharpest I’ve ever seen, like a lightning strike in the middle of a sunny day.

“Where’d you even find these?”

“Secrets,” she says, sticking two lit ones behind her ears like some weird horns and giving me a handful. “Can’t give them all away.”

I wave at Alyssa, who’s helping carry buckets of water over, and tell Hayden not to blow anything up (she just winks and says “No promises”), and then I duck back through the crowd to find my friends. The word “friends” still feels weird to me. I hold it as long as I can, letting the warmth of the word fill me up. I find the small street we took refuge in. Alani dances out to me, taking two of the sparklers.

“Let’s go up on the roof!” she points to an old ladder up a two-story building. It’s rusty as hell and the metal squeals like a dying pig but we make it up. Panting a little, we survey our kingdom. I like being this high. Makes me feel like I’m above everything that’s chasing us. Alani spins in circles to the music and Teddi stands between her and the edge, even though he knows she won’t fall.

Midnight arrives. We sit on the edge and wait for the show. I spot Mom and Miles threading their way through the crowd. My breath catches, because they both look different. Miles is… smiling. Like full-out grinning, and it makes him look so much less sad. He’s always planning, always strategizing, and I didn’t realize what he would be without it. Mom’s hair is down, and her face is as open as I’ve ever seen it. Whatever-this-is in the air, I see it, even for just this second, something incredibly precious, something that breaks my heart and fixes it all at once. I think I understand why Mom and Miles fought so hard, what they fought for. I think this is what they feel when I see them looking at each other. They look like… they look like _I_ feel. They look like a photo from a different universe, twenty years ago, if the world hadn’t gone the way it did, without all the things they did and had to do and that happened to them. This is what they could have if this goes right, and I suddenly I want that more than anything. For everyone. I can’t explain what I’m feeling. It’s like I’m looking at a past that never happened. Or a future that might have been. What I’m looking at defies time itself. All I know is that my throat goes tight and my eyes sting, and I look over to see Alani and Teddi as openmouthed and emotional as I am. _What a weird family I have._ And right now, they mean more to me than anything.

“They’re beautiful.” Alani finally says for all of us, her smile like stars appearing from behind evening clouds.

We sit in comfortable silence and just breathe in the cooling air, watching everyone below. Alani sways back and forth and bumps me with her shoulder, then Teddi, then back again to the beat of the song. And then we hear a crack, and sparks fizzle onto the damp ground. The crowd turns towards the field and cheers. Other people have a similar idea we do and scramble up onto precarious car barricades or roofs or windowsills. We all lean forward together, waiting for the moment… and _BOOM!_ The first one goes off fifty feet high in a blaze of gold glitter that showers back to the ground. Everyone loses their minds, jumping up and down and yelling like the power came back on. It’s dark, but I can tell Hayden is grinning wide enough to reach us all the way over here. I can barely see her running around from stake to stake, lighting the fuses. The sound resounds in my chest, a deep roar slamming into my bones that feels like it’ll crack my sternum, but it doesn’t. 

“It’s so loud!” Alani shouts, her face ecstatic. Another deafening blast lights up the sky, illuminating our faces and the smoke _. Maybe we should all be farther away?_ Oh well. If we go deaf, we go deaf. I can finally use all the sign language I learned.

Teddi has the same idea, because his face lights up and he signs _I love this. I like the gold ones._

_Me too_ I say. _Did you know fireworks are a thousand years old? Invented in ancient China._ (Approximately, anyway. I’m still pretty basic with it.)

_Did you know you are a nerd_ Alani signs.

I flip her off the common way and in sign language. It’s funny cause the signs for “thank you” and “fuck you” are really similar, so she says _You’re welcome_ with an impish smile back at me. The glow flickers on our faces and we edge closer to each other as green and purple light the sky. Even with the thunderous noise, this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.

I feel Alani looking at me, so I turn my head towards her, thinking that she’s gonna steal my flower crown or something. Instead, she kisses me, as fast and light as the sparks floating down. My heart somehow stops and becomes the speed of light at the same time, and I’m just gaping at her as she pulls away. She lifts her head delightedly, and rising, reaches for Teddi and pulls him in by the front of his shirt. Something in my mind starts to makes sense, falls into place, completes the harmony I’ve been hearing for a while now. Teddi blushes but he’s smiling like he’s found the sun after that rainstorm. Then he leans towards me, and as his lips gently touch mine, in a flash, understanding hits me like the fireworks overhead.

We don’t say anything, just watch and wait for the finale, which Hayden promised would be “extra spectacularly epic.” It is. It’s a never-ending stream of colors and flashes and some incredible invention that’s lasted a thousand years, when people used their ideas and technology for celebration and wonder instead of wars. It’s even better leaning into Teddi and Alani. We don’t call it anything, don’t try and figure it out right now. I just sit still, taking in as much of their warmth and breathing as I can, so I don’t scare myself away. I don’t think about tomorrow. (Or at least, I try not to.) The crowds below, everyone on the roofs, us, all break into cheers when the last flickers hit the ground and fade into the air. I feel a weird ache in my chest, a hurt I want to hold on to. Alani squeezes my hand and Teddi’s eyes focus beyond the clouds of smoke. It smells like something burning, like wood and something else sharp. Then I see what he’s looking at—stars. Something we all forgot to look at while we were just surviving. We lay on our backs on the roof for a little longer, talking and imagining what living could look like. Somehow, it feels possible. And I let myself hope for it, even though that hurts more than the ringing in my ears. _But_ … I realize _,_ it feels like a growing pain.


	30. Leaving (Rachel)

[August 19th, 2029]

It feels criminal, leaving in this pre-dawn light. Criminal as in it feels like we’re sneaking away (which we are), and criminal as in it feels wrong to leave this. I don’t want to and there’s still so much to do. We’re up before anyone’s even thinking of waking up, muffle the horses’ feet and walk as slow as we can to the edge of town, where we’re meeting the generals at the bridge. My head’s still spinning and my ears are still ringing from last night. Dad’s been fussing around the supplies for ten minutes, even though he knows they’re all set. We’re all antsy, caught between here and somewhere else, between this new world and the one behind us.

Something happened last night. _No, not_ that _thing_. Miles looks at me like he’s thinking about that too. No, something happened with Charlie. Her and Alani and Teddi. Miles noticed it too. We both see it as soon as the three of them come out of the late-August mist together. We watch them without making it obvious we are, like observing wild animals that startle easily. They’re standing together against one of the wagons, which we’re bringing to another rebel base town on our way there. Some worry lifts off my shoulders, the fear that we wrecked the world so much that Charlie would only ever know war.

Dad sees us watching the kids and comes over. “What…?” he trails off, following our line of sight. I hold my breath, not sure if I should be worried about his reaction. But he just shakes his head, and with a small smile, says “If she’s happy in this godforsaken world, then I am too.” I lean against his arm, and his face is amused. “Maybe I just don’t understand the kids these days…” he muses, glancing between me and Miles.

I can see the corner of Miles’ mouth turn up, even though he tries to be serious around my dad. “That’s okay,” he says. “You’re doing pretty well for an old-timer.” With that, he goes to meet Cortez and Allen, who are emerging from the fog over the river.

Too soon, Allen arrives, walking with help on his injured leg even though I told him not to. “Too loud taking horses out. Too many people around the Observatory,” he grimaces, leaning on Hill, who looks at me like _I tried to talk him out of it…_

We look small to me in this haze of almost-light. We look like almost-people, a little undefined around the edges, not fully formed. We barely know where we’re going; this is a half-formed plan at best. But it’s all we have. There aren’t any rules now. _Were there ever any?_ They change so fast, with the state of the world or the state of our minds. We make them up as we go. Sometimes the rules are violent. Sometimes they’re just unclear. Transforming with each revolution. Some things I know will stay though. The things that’ve lasted since before this. And the things that will outlast this. I realize I’ve been spacing out and refocus. Garza has been giving us the directions for the tenth time. Miles told them our plan again, as much as he can without giving anything away.

“I don’t like this,” Tomaz says, frowning. “What if you need backup? What if something goes wrong?”

“This isn’t something you can fight,” Priscilla reminds them gently. They sigh, _I know,_ and we all look around at each other, not sure what to do or say now that the moment’s here.

Cortez steps back and spreads her arms, like she’s gesturing to the whole now-wider world. “Good luck. We’ll be thinking of you.”

Allen nods at us all, firmly, like we’re making a pact to come back. Hill meets all of our eyes, like she’s telling us she believes, or at least hopes, we can do this. Tomaz’s mouth twists in a bittersweet smile. “Go get ‘em.”

Garza shakes all our hands, and if I didn’t know him better, I’d say he almost looked sad to see us go. Charlie says something to him in a low voice with a wicked grin, and he almost starts in surprise. She looks at me conspiratorially, like I’m in on this secret. Garza looks at her sternly, but he shuffles embarrassedly and then sighs in defeat, and by Charlie’s expression, she knows she’s got him. I make a note to ask her what in the world she said. I would tell her to stop pestering various leadership who we need on our side, but I know there’s no point. Besides, what’ve we been teaching her to do this whole time? I try and commit this all to memory, so I remember the faces of everyone back here.

Then comes the harder part. I can already see Alani and Dad trying not to cry, and if they cry, I’ll start too. Alani and Teddi feel like mine already, so I silently promise that I’ll get Charlie back to them. Dad looks right at me, tells me to come back or else. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just nod resolutely. One way or another, this will be done.

“Neville is with Buchannan and Harrison, two miles out.” Allen says. “I’m assuming you have Monroe somewhere?”

Miles makes a face. “Guilty.”

“We _are_ going to deal with that later,” Garza mutters under his breath. We all exhale in a collective laugh, especially because he’s the one who made a joke. It’s time to go.

While we’re all turned around, throwing the last things onto the wagon, Charlie runs back towards her friends _(‘Friends’? What word should I use? Is there one? Does it matter?)_ , kisses Teddi swiftly and urgently, and presses her lips gently to Alani’s, and the three of them stand in their circle where I know the only thing that exists is each other. Then Charlie turns quickly and leaps onto the horse before she can change her mind. She’s out of here first, leading us forward. Priscilla takes the reins and the wagon creaks forward, carrying her and Aaron and supplies and messages for Bedford. I hop up on it as it passes by, watch their faces recede into the hazy dawn. Miles catches up to us, and we share a long look before turning ahead. I feel like we’re disappearing into the fog, nothing before us and nothing behind us, just a big question that we’re hoping to answer.


	31. Travelling (Priscilla)

[August 19th – September 2nd, 2029]

Logically, we can’t expect to get from D.C. to Chicago _fast_ , but every day it feels like a new storm is brewing, the clouds moving faster and closer, the clock counting down. We pass signs for towns I would have never known about if not for this journey. I read them all as we pass, trying to commemorate them somehow, keep them from slowly fading from memory. Many are abandoned. A few show signs of fire or an attack. We pass few people. Most are clustered together for safety, and I look at all of the empty places. The whole country’s a ghost town. It’s still eerie, twenty years later.

Bedford, Pennsylvania is our first stop. It’s a beautiful place nestled in the hills. The late light of summer makes it look almost quaint. We meet Major Emmett here, one of the Texas Rangers. He’s harried but nice enough, considering the amount of work he has to do. He thanks us for the messages and offers us a few more days of supplies. The people look at us with curious but not unfriendly eyes. It’s gonna take some time before we stop automatically distrusting strangers, but I guess the fact that we’re carrying messages from the generals means we’re okay. I wonder if this is how Washington’s messengers felt during the Revolutionary War. I ask that out loud, and everyone laughs. “Except this time, we’re _fighting_ the Patriots,” Monroe says. It’s bizarre travelling with him and Neville. Never in a million years did I ever see this happening, but then again, I never thought any of this was even possible, not in our wildest projections.

I spend most of the time watching everyone else. That’s the thing, when there’s no phones, no billboards, no TV, no ads, nothing to watch, you end up watching people. Aaron is super tense, I can tell. He spends most of the time thinking, probably trying to figure out a way to stop the nanites. Rachel looks sometimes dreamily out into space, sometimes more conflicted as deeper thoughts wrinkle her forehead. Miles and Charlie—oh man, they’re so much alike, I don’t even know if they realize—they both look ahead, paying attention to every little sound. Monroe—well, I don’t know what to make of him. If I didn’t know who he was, I’d probably trust him. He has that kind of face, and that scares me. Neville, on the other hand, just looks unhinged. I think that scares me more. I know that Monroe has Connor to look for, but Neville has nothing, and it shows in his empty eyes. I think about my kids too, but not as much as I would’ve thought. I wonder if I’ll see them again. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to explain this to them. I wonder if they’ll forgive me. Whatever the outcome, I’m not going back until they’re safe from this. Some days I feel like an outsider in my own body, like I’m watching myself, too. I wonder if the nanites did something to my brain, or if we all just have too much trauma to handle. Probably both.

By the beginning of the second week, I’m sick of Ohio. It’s really, really, _really_ wide. _God I miss cars._ We eventually reach Warren, Ohio, the furthest north reclaimed town in the Midwest, where the best part is a castle. Okay, it’s not really a castle, but it’s close. It’s actually the old courthouse, but the residents decided that they may as well have some fun. They have weddings there, town meetings, and even throw fancy balls every month or so. I like it there; the town seems almost peaceful. We hand off the coded messages and exchange horses and on we go. I have no idea what the officers were told or what the missives say, but they give us what we need and don’t ask any questions. Normally, I’d be suspicious in their place, but I think everyone’s too exhausted from the summer to worry about things like that. Sometimes you have to be on your guard. Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts to tell you what’s friend and what’s foe.

Six hours from leaving Warren, we pass a reservoir and fill up. I keep expecting to encounter bandits or slavers, but maybe they’ve all been scared off by the rebel forces. _Speaking of, what do we call ourselves now? Do we go back to being separate nations?_ I hope not. That would just be depressing.

I think about how different this is from what we used to think. About adventures. About heroes. About stories. I know how Frodo and Sam felt now. This isn’t glorious. It’s not even interesting, half the time. it’s just a lot of walking. Trying to fix past mistakes, some that aren’t even yours.

Do you know how many farms there are in Ohio? A fucking million. The next three days are all old farmland. You can see where they cut it into pieces, where it would make a patchwork if you could get an aerial view. And most of it is empty. We pass a few small communities, a few large families. Some just watch us warily and I wonder if they’ve heard the news, if they’ve heard any of it. Some have, I think, because they’ll cautiously smile or raise a hand in greeting.

As we get closer, I notice a change in Rachel, Charlie, Aaron, and Miles too. They’re looking around like this looks familiar, which I guess it does. I wonder what they’re feeling, being so close to a place that used to be home. I’m struck by a sudden feeling, something deeper than hope, more like a need, to call a place, any place, home again. 


	32. Sherwood (Rachel)

[September 3rd, 2029]

We take a break by the Maumee River, as the sign tells us, entering a county called—wait for it— “Defiance”. We give the horses a break and stretch out on the ground. Well, some of us do. Miles and Bas stand like sentries at a post, and Neville’s over by a rock looking like some sort of evil troll or something.

I let the water run over my hand and watch the tiny streaks of light flash by. The water is cleaner than I’ve ever seen this close to Chicago. I think about all the microbes and infinitesimal particles in the water rushing over my hand. I think about everything that used to go through here—plastic, biohazards, waste— whatever else went into our water. Tiny tiny atoms amassing over time, every day. Kind of like the nanos. I wonder what’s in here now. I wonder how much better off the rest of the planet is without power. I wonder, and not for the first time, if the world would’ve ended anyway, regardless of if we did what we did. The whole reason we were trying for endless renewable energy was because we were going to need it. All public projections were too slow, too moderate, too dispassionate. That’s the problem—information wasn’t released until it was one hundred and ten percent confirmed, just to be sure. Don’t unnecessarily scare the public. Or, don’t antagonize the people with money. But maybe we should have. _Would it have made a difference?_ I know, and I know this for certain, that if we’d continued like we had without changing, we would have seen a worldwide ecological collapse by 2050 at the absolute latest. Probably earlier. _So_ , I let that quiet question rise up from my mind, _did we end the world? Or did we save it?_ I never know if I think that because it could be true, or if I just want to alleviate my guilt somewhat.

I look towards where I know the Chicago skyline rises, even if I can’t see it from two hundred miles away, and a shiver runs down my back. Ghosts pass from my brain down my spine. _So close to home._ Almost twenty years…

I grit my teeth and push myself to my feet. _Not now._ We have things to do.

“I guess breaktime’s over,” Bas says, scooping up one of the horses’ reins. “Now do we get to know where we’re going? Or are we continuing this magical mystery tour?” No one answers him, as usual.

Defiance County really has some ironic names. The next town is called Sherwood. We all look at each other and try not to laugh. We’re either the best or worst band of thieves ever. And we’re not particularly merry.

Either our map is completely wrong, or we drifted off course a little. The trees here are different. There’s a lot of new growth, patching up the gaps in the older woods. There’s a lot of trees, period. Some of them don’t even look like the same species. That should’ve been my first clue.

The second clue is the people stepping out of the woods. The horses barely flinch. “Jeez, thanks guys,” Miles mutters, pulling his to a halt. We’re surrounded. I didn’t even see them. I don’t think anyone did. They blend into the trees, shifting greens and shadows. The other weird thing? They’re all holding not guns, but bows.

“Ahoy, fair travelers!” someone steps out front. “What brings you to these woods?”

“Uh,” Miles clears his throat after a pause. “We’re, uh, traveling.”

“Shit, did we step into _Men in Tights_?” Bas says under his breath. He’s not wrong. They’re mostly dressed in modern clothes but I’m getting a very renaissance fair vibe. 

“To where?” the man raises an eyebrow. The arrows don’t lower from their targets, which is us.

“Chicago.” Charlie says abruptly. Murmurs fly around the circle.

“Are you sure you want to go that way, friends?”

“Yeah.” Charlie says, her eyes level. “We’re sure.”

The man turns towards his crew, presumably, and raises his arms. “What say you?” _Are they gonna rob us? Kill us?_ Nothing in their demeanor suggests fear or even aggression, which only adds to my cult theory. _However_ , this _is_ the most interested and alert I’ve seen Neville look this whole time, so there’s that. 

“They don’t look like Patriots,” someone I can’t see pipes up. _Okay_. So they’re probably at least on our side. Not that that makes any of us relax. 

“What _are_ you here for?” another person asks curiously. 

“We’re just passing—” Miles begins, but he’s interrupted.

“No, what are you _here_ for?” they repeat, more forcefully. “No one comes this way or goes to Chicago.”

I can tell we’re all resisting the urge to look around at each other, decide what to say. Aaron takes it. “We’re here to fix a mistake.” He says. His words fall like acorns from the trees to the ground, where they could take root and grow.

There’s silence except for the breeze through the leaves. I can feel eyes on us, not hateful or judgmental, more like they’re… weighing us.

The man in charge nods. “Take their weapons. Let’s go to the Crow’s Nest. To see them.” They move so fast I barely have time to wonder who “they” are. We’re quickly relieved of weapons, even concealed ones, and these bizarre people lead the horses on. 

I can’t tell where we’re going. They’re following paths I only spot once we’re on them. We pass several small camps, all connected by this path. I count at least a hundred people, and those are just the ones we can see. Clearly, they’re very adept at not being seen. And there’s kids here. Watching us curiously. Running around. Sitting in trees. I have no idea what I’m looking at, but I know this wasn’t on the map.

And there’s a few houses—like they’ve been swallowed by the forest. _Is this the edge of a town?_ Judging by everyone’s faces, I’m not the only one who’s getting more and more confused by the second.

“Did—did we… all take some bad shrooms or something?” Aaron asks. “Is this a collective hallucination?”

The leaves are still so green, but I don’t think so. We step over an old railroad track line, and past the river again. There are more people here, and whatever this is, it seems to be leading to the more populated part of… whatever this is. We stop in a clearing in front of a possible house that’s now appears to be partly a tree. It looks like part of the roof caved in, but the tree grew to fix the walls and the roof. Thick roots and branches twine and form a solid cover. It blends into the trunk and I can’t tell what’s manmade and what’s natural. _Is this what the other houses look like up close too?_ The structure reaches as high as the crowns.

I can’t find the door, but something opens, and someone steps out. “Jay?” They look questioningly at the man who took us here. Their face is open but alert. Several kids run out past them and they absentmindedly reach out affectionately while keeping their eyes on us.

“Found them walking through. Say they’re going to Chicago.”

Now they look interested. “And what, may I ask, do you want there?”

“That’s our business.” Bas says shortly.

“Did I _say_ you could talk?” Miles quietly asks him. He faces this new person. “We have something we need to get. Honestly, did not even know you guys were here. We aren’t planning on telling anyone. So, if you could just let us go…”

They take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I could. I could not.” They look at each of us, definitely noticing how our muscles tighten and our eyes narrow. I look out of the corner of my eye at Charlie, at Priscilla, trying to figure out our getaway.

They laugh suddenly, but it’s not vicious or crazy. More… playful? “I’m kidding. You’re not Patriots or slavers. I’m Robyn. This is our home.”

“You’ve… got to be kidding me,” Aaron says slowly. He looks at the rest of us. “Robyn.” It hits us all at once, and we reel back a little, expecting everyone to jump out of the bushes and yell “Surprise!” or “Tally ho!” or something equally ridiculous.

“Are you like… a theater company?” Charlie asks, trying to figure this out.

Robyn shakes their head. “No. We used to live over there.” They walk towards the horses and we all stiffen, but they just pat the horse’s head while pointing northwest. “Sherwood. The town.”

“…….”

“So what happened?” Miles breaks the silence after they don’t add anything else to that.

They grin at us, like we’re old friends. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Yeah, because a group of… bandits living in the woods in treehouses is more believable!?” Charlie gestures around vigorously.

“We’re not a cult, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Robyn tilts their head.

“Yeah. Actually, that was exactly what we were thinking.” Aaron says.

Jay actually laughs. “No. Believe it or not, we’re normal people. Lived in normal houses until two years ago. We’re just trying to live as we survive. Give the kids—all of us—something that isn’t just this mess of reality.” The way he says that—honestly, simply—makes me want to trust him. I don’t see any fanaticism in their eyes. And believe me, I’ve seen every kind from every angle.

“You weren’t entirely off,” Robyn nods at Charlie. “We are storytellers. Living in this—fantasy place.”

I shake my head to try and clear it. Maybe we _did_ eat something bad. This feels so off, not wrong, just so contrary to… well, everything.

“Alright, let them go,” Robyn motions to Jay and our other guard whose name might be Mira. “Come on!” This last sentence is directed at us.

“What—where—”

“Just shut up and follow,” Robyn calls, already ten feet ahead. “And don’t try anything. I’ll explain on the way.”

As we walk, I’m struck by how beautiful this is. The sunlight filters through the trees like the reflection of water, and the birds are so loud here. It’s like nothing ever touched here.

“We didn’t expect it.” Robyn suddenly declares up ahead, their voice like a pronouncement, like they’re opening a scene to a play. We all focus on them, the kid inside of us knowing there’s a hell of a story ahead. “The blackout. The loss. But also what came after. The growing.” I still don’t know who the fuck these people are, but they aren’t lying about one thing: they are definitely storytellers.

“I was eleven years old,” Robyn continues. Their voice carries through the trees, winding around us like a spell. “I was afraid, just like everyone else. We lost electricity, we lost family, we lost communication and what we thought the future would be.” Aaron and Priscilla and I look at each other, and I know the pain in their eyes is in my own too. “But we still had some things.” Robyn pauses dramatically. “My father told me stories. He used to be a writer, so he became our teacher. He told us every story he could remember. My favorite was, you guessed it, the adventures of Robin Hood. I pretended I was named after him. We played Robin Hood and the merry band of thieves, or heroes, whichever you prefer, all day long. We pretended while we broke into houses. We pretended when things got violent. That the gangs were King John and his men. We pretended that we’d always lived like this, by scraps and by firelight, by running and fighting, by the joy of the chase and holding on to whatever morals we had left to hold on to.”

We are all silent, entranced. _Maybe this is magic._ Maybe we are in a dream. Maybe it’s just been so long since anyone told us a story in a voice that wasn’t afraid or angry, but a voice for imagining and creating. Maybe it’s just been so long since anyone told us a story.

“I remembered that every day of my life. How my father, and the others, all did what they could to make us braver, to remind us that there was more to life than this, to remind us that even though the world is broken, we can still make something grow, even for a moment.” Their voice is like pebbles dropping into a stream. “I took that with me everywhere I went. In town, we didn’t have a mayor, or guards. We had us, our company of thieves, stealing what we could of imagination and joy and dare I say, hope. Using not weapons, but words and memory.”

They look around at our faces and smile, seeing our faces. “We told as many tales as we could. We pretended the houses were castles and each of us, knights. We made our town around it. Stories. And then, two years ago, the power came on and went out again. And when it left, everything looked the same. But everything changed.” We’re at a small river; we cross over on a moss-covered log while the horses wade through.

“See, the thing about humans is that we always adjust. We fit our surroundings, no matter how destructive. We’d all made our homes as best we could. Except now, that order had changed. We began to hear talk of Patriots, of the old world that was more fantasy than our stories. We wondered, was this the start of a new chapter? We’d been reading the old one for so long we forgotten there might be a page to turn. We started to dream. I thought of things I hadn’t in years, remembered adventures we’d created, relived memories I’d forgotten. Thought of how as kids, we’d imagined Sherwood the town to be Sherwood the forest, how the power went out because of an angry king and how we might fix it. And the town began to change.” We’ve entered some place that used to be the town’s main street. It’s intertwined with the trees now, half the buildings warped into treetop bridges and platforms. The pavement is cracked through, grass sprouting up all around our feet.

“First came the trees. Almost overnight, they grew, sprouted faster than we could count them. Then, the ground. Then the town itself.” Robyn spreads their arms wide around us. I look around and see people, on the platforms or in the remaining houses, like they knew we were coming, or they want to hear Robyn speak too.

“And then one night, we saw it. The kids called it fairy dust; some of the older ones thought it might be radiation; some thought it was earth gods reclaiming the planet; a few thought it was alien; others thought it was the end of the world. Whatever it was, it seemed to be drawn to our town. It descended upon us like a curious fog, sniffing the air and testing the walls. We didn’t know what it was.” We’re all holding our breath; we know what it was. “It didn’t stay long. Just a few days, maybe a week. Long enough to see our daydreams, hear our stories. We didn’t know what else to do except keep going. See if it was sentient, if it was an enemy or an ally. All we could find out was it liked to hear us. We have a tradition, a storyteller, every other day, just to bring us together and take us away from here for a little while. It would gather whenever we did, listen and learn, because it took from those tales and made this.” We stop at what seems to be the center of something, in a large expanse of grass. An enormous tree rises in the middle, its leaves reaching over us, remaining asphalt cracking as roots burst through. 

“We planted this the first year. He’s long since passed, but we used to have a gardener with us. He planted flowers for everyone we lost. When he died, we did this for him. It was only nineteen years old, still barely a sapling. Whatever it was, it grew this.” They drop their arms and look at us with an expression of resigned confusion. “We still don’t know what it was. Where it went. Where it came from. But it did this. Gave us a gift. A chance to make something better than what we have, to go beyond everyday survival and the sharpness of reality. It reminded us that there’s more. So we keep that alive. That’s who we are.” Our group is quiet, almost reverent.

“We’re really not that different,” Jay adds quietly, and Mira nods. “Just some people with cool houses who love theatrics.”

“And maybe we seem crazy, or at the very least senseless and even impractical, but I can tell you that our game, our pretending, has done more to keep us together and keep us sane than every other town I’ve encountered.” Robyn leans against the tree, looking up. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know what it was. We live in a time of unanswered questions. We might not have answers to give the future, but we can give them this.” Their stance tells me that’s the end of their tale. It’s not the end of ours, though.

“Actually—” Aaron starts and stops. “We—we might have the answer to that.”


	33. The Truth, Continued (Miles)

“…So what you saw was the nanites,” Aaron finishes explaining. “Like I said, they can make things grow and kinda… control things. Read minds, in a way. They must’ve… heard your stories or something. Made the town what it is.” He leans back and rocks on his heels. “So yeah. We’re here to try and stop them.”

They’re taking this surprisingly well. Robyn, Jay, their second-in-command, and Mira and Georgia, his captains, took us to what they called the town hall. Aaron, Priscilla, and Rachel have taken turns explaining why we’re here. Including the current danger from the nanites. I’m still trying to figure out why they didn’t do what they did in other places here.

The four of them, to their credit, don’t look as a) pissed, or b) confused as I thought they would. Rachel explained to me something called Occam’s Razor. Basically, it has to do with the simplest answer being the most plausible one. I guess this is somehow the answer with the most explanation to fit the events.

“Shoulda known it was too good to be true,” Mira sighs, kicking a rock. “Thought it was a miracle. Well,” she looks up. “First I thought we were all hallucinating. Guess I was still wrong.”

“Why didn’t they kill us?” Georgia asks. She doesn’t look scared given Sherwood’s brush with death so much as puzzled.

“I feel so gross now,” Mira adds, shaking her arms and legs out. “Like we collaborated with a serial killer or something.”

“No,” Aaron says emphatically, shaking his head. “You did what we _didn’t_ do.” He explains further as they look questioningly at him. “You taught it—the nanites—humanity. You showed it—stories, and, and teamwork, and _good_ things, and, _hope_. We showed it the worst of us. You showed it the best.”

“It learned from us,” Rachel says softly. She leans against a table, hugging her arms. “Most of the world is violent, and angry. How could it be anything else? It was designed to learn, and that’s what it did. You gave it the chance to see something different. Maybe it remembers. Maybe it made a difference.”

We’re all quiet. Thinking about what we could have done differently. Which is everything.

“Here I was, fighting all this time, when really fairy tales could have saved us all.” Neville speaks for about the first time in a day, shaking his head. I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic and an asshole, or if he’s just as floored as the rest of us. Probably the first one.

“Hey, your band of thieves is more effective than ours so far,” Bas shrugs, offering support to Robyn’s crew but mostly just trying to antagonize Neville.

“Well,” Robyn’s grin turns wolfish now, changing the mood from somber to jovial. “We do live up to our name. Stealing from the rich to give to the rebellion…”

That makes me look up. “That was you guys?” The four of them nod proudly back. I explain to everyone else. “Buchannan had been getting reports of someone just, fucking with the Patriots. Attacking their supply chains, breaking up their troops, stealing their horses.” I laugh. “Wait till he hears who it was.”

Mira offers a short bow. “At your service.”

“So,” Robyn interrupts, coming back from deep in thought. “What’s your plan? And can we help?”

“Um and No,” Charlie replies, like the smartass she is. “Our plan is wing it until we get closer, and we’re not taking anyone else in this with us.”

“You weren’t even _there_ ,” Bas comments quietly.

She glares at him. “At least I didn’t make it worse.” (Jay silently mouths _ohhhh_ at this epic comeback.)

“You guys have done more than enough,” Priscilla adds. “We didn’t even know it could do things like this.”

“Why do you even want to help us?” Aaron asks, spreading his hands. “Most people would wanna kill us.”

“Well, that would leave us all fucked, wouldn’t it?” Robyn raises an eyebrow. “If you’re the only chance of stopping it. Also, what good would that do?”

“Well at least someone still has common sense,” Aaron sighs. “Wish more people were like you guys. I’m still not convinced this isn’t some hallucination caused by the last part of my brain still believing there’s decency in the world.”

Robyn just smiles. “At least stay for tonight. Leave in the morning and we’ll give you some supplies. You’ll be safe here.”

“And,” Mira grins. “You’ll see the show.” The… bandits? Whatever they are exchange glances like they have the best secret in the world, which at this point, they probably do. I wonder if there’s other places like this.

If we’re being honest, I think we all want to stay here. Maybe forever. In this absolutely strange, magical forest that’s not supposed to be here, with people who may be off their rockers but are good and genuinely kind and who play make believe like kids. I think, even with everything else, this is the most surprising thing I’ve seen: that something like this could survive. We all look around at each other, but our answer is decided before I tell them, “Yeah.”


	34. Yet We Sleep, We Dream (Aaron)

[September 3rd-4th, 2029]

Somehow, Sherwood becomes even more magical at night. We spend the day wandering around, marveling at how the trees seamlessly grew in with the houses and the old town. The people are curious and friendly. The kids are absolutely wild, climbing up and down trees and ladders with the ease of trapeze performers. We trade them a story and tell everyone how we beat the Patriots, and the whole crowd of a hundred-ish people listens like we’re telling them the meaning of the universe. Rachel is really good at telling stories. I see the memories in her eyes and in her voice and in the movements of her arms, not memories of the war, but her instincts of how to be a mom. The rest of us add a detail or two. Charlie jumps in with the occasional quip, but mostly she watches Rachel, head tilted to the side, maybe remembering her mom too. The afternoon flies by, and as it gets darker, I see lights go up around the forest. 

Charlie walks over to one and inspects it, hanging from a branch. It’s a unsymmetrical glass globe that’s open at the top with a wick inside.

“Glassblower,” Georgia, our current tour guide, explains, pointing out a dude with a lot of cool tattoos. “He took the broken windows from the other houses and made these.” The result looks like something out of a kid’s book. Lights glow all around us, and they chime softly when the wind knocks the together. It really looks like we stepped into another world. Fire flickers in the trees and bounces off the glass, warm, comforting, the opposite of the nano-fireflies.

All of a sudden, a sound reverberates through the trees. Two, actually. One is a low, steady horn. The other, a clear ringing that increases in volume before fading out. “That’s the cue!” Georgia spins towards the sound.

“It’s tiiiiime!” Kids run past me, excited, like this is some sort of paradise and not the middle of hell. Maybe this is an oasis. We follow the gathering throngs of people back to that huge tree in the center of Sherwood. There are lights strung up in the branches, and short torches on either side of what I see is the “stage”. Here’s where they perform. Sometimes small groups will put on plays, sometimes the kids will, sometimes they play music, sometimes they have town meetings here. It fits all three hundred-ish people, and we take a seat on the ground. I feel a little out of place, but they don’t look at us any differently.

Robyn hops up ‘onstage.’ “Tonight.” They call out, and silence falls so fast my head whips around to make sure the nanites aren’t here, controlling us. They’re not. Everyone is just waiting. “Tonight,” Robyn continues. “We have some new friends with us. They leave in the morning, but we promised them a story.” I notice something I didn’t before—a parabola of thin metal, set up wide around the tree. That’s why we can all hear them so well, the sound’s bouncing off the curved structure. I look at Rachel and see she’s noticed the same thing. _These people._ They made stuff. Instead of just… trudging on with what they had. Or breaking it.

A kid steps forward to take over. She looks fifteen, maybe sixteen. “Tomorrow, they go to save the world.” We all stiffen, but no one moves towards us except to look our way. “So we’ll give them a gift. Our best. Words to keep them brave and resilient, words to inspire and to remember. Words to wound and words to heal. Sharp as sunbeams and resolute as the revolution of the planet.” She picks up something from the ground. An acorn, I think.

An even younger kid takes her place, she can’t be more than ten or eleven. “After all, aren’t we all saving the world as best we can?” She holds up the acorn to the crowd. “This will outlast us. It’s our job to make sure it gets there.”

Robyn faces us all again. “Sherwood, we have survived on words. Stories. Hope. Happenstance. We built a world again. We dream. Maybe we can grow again. Reach out like this tree” – they point upward, over all our heads— “farther than we thought possible. Don’t settle. Make it better. We owe the ones we lost and the ones we will have, and ourselves, that.” They look solemnly at us. “To the past.”

“To the past.” The crowd echoes.

“To the future.”

“To the future.”

“To now.”

The resounding ‘To now’ is the loudest and the strongest, and I can feel the vibrations from hundreds of voices. I get the feeling this isn’t their normal opening. People are looking at us, like they’ll never see us again, or like we’re the most interesting story they’ve ever had. I wonder what Robyn’ll tell them. They said they’d wait till we were gone. But everyone’s attention is directed back towards the front as the storytellers—bards—poets—players—whatever you want to call them—begin.

I can’t tell you what story we hear. I don’t think any of us can. All I know is it sounds like something that’s been missing for a long time. The tellers pass the story back and forth so effortlessly, it seems like there’s just one of them. Their voices are all different, and they stay in my mind like I’ve been hearing them my whole life. I look over and see tears on Rachel’s cheeks, and then I touch mine to find they’re wet too. We laugh at some parts, sit still at others. I have a weird feeling inside that’s like joy mixed with sadness mixed with a feeling of… caring about something bigger than you. Floating in space looking down on the whole planet. I should be more scared but I’m not. I’m terrified but not paralyzed. This isn’t just a story—it’s a call.

When we leave the next morning, early rays piercing through fog, I have that feeling still, something propelling my feet forward. I look behind me as our farewell party is swallowed by the fog. The trees fade out as well. We left our horses and the wagon with them; they gave us rested horses and enough supplies to last for almost a month at least. When we asked how to get the horses back to them, because we sure as shit aren’t taking them into the city, they just said, “They’ll find their way back.” So that was either the weirdest and best dream I’ve had in a while, or we met a group of people who weren’t actually a crazy cult. I’m not sure of the answer, and a tiny part of my mind wonders if magic is real after all. I can tell everyone else is thinking that too. 


	35. Under My Feet (Charlie)

[September 4th – September 12th, 2029]

I still don’t know where we’re going, and I still hate it.

“So, are you going to let us in on the big secret yet, Rachel?” Monroe calls out. I scowl. I don’t want to have anything in common with him.

“No. The less you know, the less danger we’re all in if we’re captured.” Mom says straightforwardly without turning around. I don’t even know if Aaron or Priscilla know where we’re headed. Speaking of Aaron, I turn around to see how he’s doing. He’s not the biggest horse fan. I prefer to walk too, but he _really_ would rather not be riding. He gives me a pained grimace and I give him one back.

We left Sherwood a few days ago and now it’s farms and farms and more farms and farms. The level of civilization dwindles as we get closer to Chicago. We haven’t seen anyone in two days. We probably coulda made better time, but we have to swerve around big towns and small cities. Easier than finding out if there’s enemies or friends. I forgot how boring this part is. The last few times I was on the road this long, I had something to look for—revenge, mostly. Now, I have to focus on something I don’t even know exists. I hope Teddi and Alani are okay. They end up in my dreams more often than not. Some more… family-friendly than others. _Well, I guess_ that’s _something to keep going for._ I drop my grin before someone can ask me what I’m thinking about.

And everything is so _flat_ and _boring_. Either I forgot about that or I got used to the slightly more hills. And having more things to do other than look at the same grass for days. We reach the Kankakee River and I stop, swiftly unsaddle and unload my horse, and lead us both directly into the river. It’s that weird week in September where it’s ninety degrees like it’s August, and I’ll be dry in like half an hour anyway. I ignore the ache in my chest reminding me of another river, one not so lonely as this one.

Miles laughs at me. “Aw come on Charlie, I didn’t think you smelled _that_ bad.”

“Go jump in a lake,” I say, gesturing around us. I regret that two seconds later when he splashes his horse into the river as well, the water hitting me right in the face. It doesn’t taste good. But I got Miles in the water, so ha. We’ve all been in weirdly communal moods, either all really cranky or all really sad or all really agitated, depending on the day. Today’s mood is silly with a side of heat dazed. I slog out of the water up the riverbank and onto a small incline, and then I turn suddenly and launch myself at Miles. He’s not expecting me and we both go over, his horse startling to the side. I come up for air before laughing. The water’s about four feet deep at most, so he thrashes around a little before finding his footing.

“What the fuck—” Miles sputters. “How did you even jump that far?”

“Motivation.” I look back at the shoreline. Mom’s eyes are happier than I’ve seen in a while, and Aaron gives me a thumbs up. Priscilla is laughing, which is good cause she’s been pretty quiet lately, probably thinking about the nanos brainwashing other people. Monroe is absolutely losing his shit; I’ve never seen him laugh so hard. Not sure why I feel a weird twist of happiness, or victory, about that one. Maybe because any humor is so fleeting, any expression of it is good? Maybe some part of me just wants everybody to laugh. I file that feeling away for never to be thought about again. Even Neville looks at least a little entertained.

We let the horses drink, and everyone joins us in the water in various levels of commitment to actually going in. How weird must this look right now? What would Danny say? Sometimes my head spins if I try to think about it. These moments of fun or levity. With some of the people I hate (hat _ed_? Fought with?) most in the world. Who _do_ I hate? It was Monroe. Then it was Neville. Then it was the Patriots. Then it was the nanites. It’s still all of those things, but I can’t keep the focus on all of them. Some of it fades into the background depending on what we have to do.

Don’t listen to the people who tell you the world isn’t black and white, that it’s shades of grey. The world always has been and always will be divided into right and wrong. We _know_ when we do things that are wrong. We _know_ when we do things that are right. I used to think that the people who do bad stuff are bad and the people who do good stuff are good. But we’ve all done everything under the sun. To survive. For revenge. Because we wanted to. Any other number of reasons. We can make a lot of exceptions, for what we do and for the people who do it. Really, what’s good and bad comes down to if they hurt _you_. How much they hurt you. What you can forgive or can’t. For yourself or for someone else.

If I think like that for too long it feels like my head’s gonna explode, so I stop. The only time I was able to actually try and figure any of that out was with Teddi and Alani, and I don’t want to think about that either, so I just try and stop thinking for now. Feel the sun and the water. Listen to it all. My chest rising and falling. The river between my fingers, back and forth. Like this, I calm myself until I can feel the ground again, shifting under my feet.

A few more hours of hard riding and I can see it. Chicago. I used to just be able to see the outer towns from the top of the Ferris wheel, so far away. This is closer. This is the closest I’ve been to a city this big, cause, as everyone knows, it’s much safer to stay away from the once-populated areas. We pass a sign for a town called Matteson, and I don’t know if I want to laugh or ride right through it, see if I can stomp it to the ground. It’s like the universe reminding us, or someone pointing an arrow directly at us. We skirt the towns and head through a forest preserve, which is actually really nice. It’s no Sherwood, but it is a nice change from flat plains and abandoned farms. The craziest thing is when we hit a giant golf course. Golf is, in my opinion, probably the stupidest game ever invented. You just try and hit the tiny-ass ball into the hole with a stick. Why. Who made that up? _Ugh_. And it’s such a huge waste of land space. It’s really not fair. What else did we waste? What did we do just because we could?

We don’t see anyone. Not a single person. People either left the cities entirely or went all in with the gangs that took over. So that makes this part a little easier at least. Mom finally tells us the name of where we’re going: Itasca. We obviously don’t wanna stop for the night in the actual town, so we stop in another forest preserve. Isn’t it funny that we had to specifically _conserve_ forests? Like without them, we would’ve just destroyed all of it. _God we were stupid_. One of the only memories I have of Mom from when I was little is her telling me how the world was before. Dad always told us the good stuff. She always told us, not the bad stuff exactly, but the mistakes we made and the aftereffects. Like she was trying to warn us about consequences of actions, even if we didn’t mean it. How easy it was for us to wreck the world in so many ways. My eyes become unfocused and I’m seeing double stars as I fall asleep less than an hour away from Itasca, the sharp sounds ‘s’ and ‘t’ and ‘c’ sounds of the word darting in and out my dreams. 


	36. We Hate Stairs (Aaron)

[September 13th, 2029]

I feel like we should be rushing. We get up when it’s light enough to see and hide all evidence of our being there. Methodically. Carefully. No mistakes now. We’re running on kind of a limited time frame. But what are we running _towards_ , exactly? Every day I wake up and wonder if the nanites evolved again, if they’ve brainwashed more people, if _I’m_ brainwashed and I just don’t know it. We can’t go any faster. I think about how much we used to rush, every day, when there was power. And then we went too far, and now we can’t go anywhere fast. I feel like there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Itasca should be less than half an hour from whatever tree we parked the horses at. Hitched them. Whatever. We decided that we’re not taking the horses into here. We need stealth more than speed. We pack up what we can, ditch the saddles, point the horses in the right direction, and send them off. They seem to be going towards Sherwood. I hope they make it. I hope we get to find out if they make it. We’re all quiet, like there’s anyone around to hear us. I still have no idea where Rachel’s taking us. A glance at Priscilla tells me she still doesn’t know either. I squeeze her hand briefly and she squeezes back. We avoid the part of the county that still contains people, which means we have to go closer to the city, which means we pass the O’Hare airport. I have a sudden out-of-body experience about all the times I flew in and out of there. All the planes must be just sitting there. We do some serious dodging and weaving as we try and balance the need for avoiding people with the need for avoiding potential hotspots. It’s like a minefield without a map. So, it takes way longer than half hour. Eventually, we get there.

“Wow,” I say, nodding and looking around. “Rachel, you really picked the place that would look most postapocalyptic. Good job.” It used to be called Hamilton Lakes. There’s a seriously murky-looking manmade pond lazily enclosed by a handful of huge weirdly shaped office buildings on what used to be heavily manicured faux grass. I think I remember coming here once, on my way to California for a meeting with Silicon Valley. Something about it feels really off now. It was such an open, artificial construct of the business owners of the past. Wide roads, “natural” scenery, lots of glass windows. Progress. Innovation. Money. And now it’s just… empty.

Rachel gives me the smallest of smiles. “You know I do everything for dramatic effect.” That’s kind of a joke between us, because Rachel was always the most pragmatic when it came to work stuff. Personal stuff, not so much, but maybe that’s why she was so good at professionalizing herself. Balance. Or compartmentalization. Whichever. 

“It’s also suuuuper open, so that’s great.” Miles shades his eyes and looks around at the expanse.

“No one else is stupid enough to be this out in the open,” Monroe assures him.

“And yet, I _still_ don’t feel better.”

“ _So_ , why are we here?” Charlie brings us back to the important topics.

Rachel takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know the full extent of what was going on. But I did what any good scientist does: hide extra copies of my work.” Her eyes are focused on us. “I had a friend who worked here, for a shipping company. I asked if I could leave some files in his office.” She looks over at the impossibly high building. Sometimes I can’t believe things like that are still standing. Not burned down or just fallen. “If they’re still there, that’s our best shot.”

“Uh,” Monroe says with a manner that implies he’s not actually confused. “If they’re on files, how are you planning on getting them.”

“ _Physical_ files,” Rachel says in a tone that could bring that building down.

“Uh, why didn’t you mention this before?” Miles asks in a manner that implies he’s actually confused.

“ _When_ would I have had time to do that?” Rachel wheels around and Miles looks cowed.

“Okay, okay,” he holds up his hands in surrender. “Let’s go, uh, get those then.”

Rachel leads us to the third building in. The windows of the first few floors are completely broken. The door’s gone. We duck inside and are greeted by something that used to be a fancy lobby. It’s so dark in here. Why did we build buildings like this? No natural light? Oh, right. Electricity.

“What floor’s his office?” Priscilla asks.

Rachel tries and fails to not smile. “Nineteen.”

“I really.” Miles marches over to the closest stairwell. “Hate.” He yanks open the door. “Whoever designed this building.”

Nineteen goddamn floors later with lots of moaning and groaning and complaining, we make it. We all stumble out the door into the hallway, legs seizing up.

“Jesus.” Monroe wheezes. “And here I thought I was in better shape than Stay Puft.” Priscilla glares at him with a fervor I haven’t seen in days. Which is good, I guess?

“Call me that one more time.” I gasp, done with his shit. “I beat the nanos. You don’t scare me anymore. And I _will_ throw you out that window.” Hey, if he wants to go, then I’ll go.

Miles barks a laugh. “I wouldn’t bet against Aaron,” he says to Monroe. But he says it not-jokingly, warning Monroe to stop, and I give him a grateful nod. He shrugs, like _it’s the least I can do_. I’ve heard every fat joke in the universe. But that doesn’t mean my brain or ears don’t work. And it doesn’t mean I can’t do this, either. I straighten up and start walking before Monroe and I see Charlie’s face split into a grin.

This floor, obviously, is almost entirely intact. Rachel, with her crazy memory, somehow remembers a place she was once almost twenty years ago. She doesn’t wait for the rest of us as she kicks open the door with her heel, close to the handle where the weakest point is. Miles is looking at her like she’s the best thing in the world. I shake my head. Tough guy my ass.

Doctor Jeden’s office is covered in dust. I really wanna open the window, but that would look pretty suspicious if anyone does come this way. Not that they won’t see our literal footprints. Rachel covers her face with her collar and drops down beside a filing cabinet.

“Anyone have the key?” Neville asks dryly. I honestly forget he’s here sometimes. Which is terrible, cause he could kill us anytime. But he’s like a ghost, here and not here at all.

Rachel wrenches open the bottom drawer with an ear-piercing squeal. She flings the whole compartment behind her and reaches farther in. I don’t even wanna know what’s behind there. I hear a muffled click and her expression turns victorious. She draws two folders out from the dark space. “Nice,” Charlie bobs her head approvingly. “Secret drawer.”

Rachel sits back and flips through the papers. They’re not as fragile as I was expecting, for being closed up for probably eighteen years. She looks up, and her expression is the breakable thing here. Determination, a chance, flickers across her face. “This is it. Let’s go. I’ll explain when we get out,” she says, rising, already anticipating our next questions. I’m happy to agree. I used to be afraid of the woods, nature. Didn’t like being out in the open with who knows what. Now, I hate the cities. I’d rather take my chances with nature any day than stick around to find out what lives here now.


	37. These Words Don’t Make Sense, but the Plan Kinda Does (Miles)

We’re out of Itasca like bats outta hell, an expression that never made any sense to me. Bats are great. They eat mosquitoes, and we’ve had enough people die of malaria. It should be ‘like a mosquito out of hell,’ cause those fuckers are the real problem.

_Dude_. I shake my head. like a dog shaking off water. _Focus_. It gets pretty hard to pay attention when you’re just travelling for days on end. I don’t _wish_ someone was trying to kill us, but…. it would wake us all up a little.

We hightail it west until we simultaneously decide to call it quits. It looks like we’ve been moving for almost four hours. It didn’t feel like it, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re running. I wonder if everyone else felt the same. There were ghosts in Itasca; there’s ghosts everywhere but this one was ours, Rachel, making the decision that will change the world. It’s weird to be so close to where it was. We spent so long trying to move past that, trying to forget it, pretend that if we weren’t physically near the places it began, then maybe we could pretend it didn’t haunt our every waking hour too.

We pick a spot that’s under more tree cover, just off the main road. We pick a house at the end of the lane and, after surveillance, gratefully fall onto the very old and dusty couches. _Remember when we used to care about things like that? How nice our houses looked?_

“ _Yes_ , I’ll tell you now,” Rachel says suddenly, knowing that either Charlie or Bas or Neville is about to ask again. She reaches into her bag and carefully extracts the two folders. We all hold our breaths, like they’re a time bomb or one of the weight traps in Indiana Jones.

Rachel smooths the covers and begins. “So I had an idea.” Her words somehow fill the room even though she’s quiet. One of the things I love about Rachel is she’s always so direct. Even when she’s uncertain, she sounds certain. “The nanites can manipulate electrical energy. They can also manipulate natural energy. But I don’t think they can do both at the same time.”

“… What?” I say, in a stunningly intelligent commentary of our situation.

“They were built for two things: to be semi-intelligent so they can learn and to generate electrical power. They evolved to do the rest—grow trees, control people, kill. Their ability to do the other things is not tied to their absorption of the electricity.” I look at Aaron and Priscilla to see if they look any less confused than I am. They don’t, but I can tell they’re thinking hard. “There’s a disconnect,” Rachel is thinking out loud as she goes now, “between their… containment of power and their ties to material object—physical brain structures, wood, cells.”

“So you think…” Aaron says slowly. “We can jump that gap? Get in there?”

“How?” Priscilla says, a statement more than a question, like she already knows they can do it.

Rachel takes a breath and holds up the folders. “That’s what these are for. Most of our research. Old plans. Ideas. Other hypotheses. The nanites weren’t our only innovation. They were just the ones we were pushed towards because of their capability to be weaponized, even though we didn’t know it at the time.”

“Is that…?” Aaron trails off, reaching for the folders. He lets the pages spill out and laughs shortly, running his hands over the scribbled words. “These… this is our stuff from school. Brainstorming. Look. My handwriting. Rachel. Priscilla. Peter. Grace. Ben. Lila. Theo. Yen.” He laughs again, the sound he makes to keep from crying. I wonder how many others of those names are finding out about the nanos, are traitors, are still alive.

Charlie kneels on the floor and holds a thin page up to the dim light through the drawn curtains. It looks like a blueprint. “What’s ‘Rhuka?” she asks, pointing out a title.

“Punjabi for ‘tree.’ We were trying to think of something that could grow and sustain itself. Renewable. Something that wouldn’t require more resources to keep going.”

“And that means…?” Bas asks less obnoxiously than previous times. 

“A power source.” Priscilla’s eyes are closed, like she’s trying to remember. “More like a power network. It would be a closed-loop system like the nanobots, taking hydro or solar or wind or geothermal energy and sharing it throughout the network. The power would generate itself. It would network across the globe, like roots. Non-conscious. Just like a giant tree. They didn’t like that one though,” she says, opening one eye. “because it would require a shift in everything we relied on for power.”

“The renewable energy sources that were already in place failed because it was connected to the old grid,” Rachel is theorizing out loud again. “This—” she indicates the paper Charlie’s holding “–was going to be a whole new kind of power cell. A new design. The nanites were built specifically for the old kind.” We all look at each other. This is a solution we never would have imagined in our craziest, most hallucinogenic dreams.

“And why didn’t you do this, I don’t know, twenty years ago?” Neville asks, sarcasm edging his words.

“I didn’t think of it.” Rachel looks at him levelly. “And we didn’t have the nanites twenty years ago. The only reason this might work is because they’re now _visible_ to us. Showing us how they operate. This wouldn’t work with them dormant. They were like… a gun with the safety still on. It had the potential to do something, but it wasn’t operational yet. I only remembered I hid this after D.C.” Because D.C. was responsible for this too. “And Sherwood showed me the dissonance between their desire to control and their ability to grow. What we programed them to do and what they figured out how to do, and what that space between might be.”

“One problem,” Bas interjects. “How’re we gonna build it?” Charlie looks like she wants to glare at him for interrupting, but he does make a good point.

Rachel sits forward, her eyes distant like she’s already working it out right now. “It’s not complicated. We just fine-tuned what was already there and borrowed the design of chloroplast structures to be able to power slightly altered solar, hydro, geo, and wind power cells by using thermal, radiant, and kinetic energies.”

“Uh…huh,” nod the three of us who have no clue what most of that means. Hey, we all have our skills.

“Basically it would’ve taken the energy all around us from the sun, from wind, from ocean tides, from whatever that was getting lost in the process of renewable electrical energy and used that for power,” Aaron says distractedly, flipping through the notes. “It would also generate energy _by sharing_ the energy through the network. Like tree roots. Pushing the reaction through its network would also generate potential energy. It could charge itself. So its output would be greater than its input.” He sounds like he’s reciting a presentation to a science committee.

“ _How_ is that easy?” Charlie asks, eyebrow raised.

“All energy is shared through chemical reactions,” Rachel says, sounding exactly like my high school science teacher but also like she’s having some mystical revelation. “Catalysts. Conductors. All we have to do is guide it.”

“We’d just need a small burst,” Aaron sounds like he just discovered the secrets of the universe. “Just enough to disrupt the nanos…”

“Just enough to add something to their environment they can’t control.” Rachel looks up, her eyes focusing on something only she can see.

“Because if they’re in a closed loop…” Priscilla breathes. Her hands are up like she’s drawing plans in the air.

“Boom.” Charlie declares, catching on. You don’t need a science degree to understand that if you overload a system, then it’ll shut down.

“But… how… are we gonna build it?” Bas asks again.

“We’re gonna have to do some scavenging.” Aaron says.

“Stealing.” (That’s my Rachel. There’s probably some secret code of honor among scientists where they don’t touch each other’s shit.)

“Rachel, nobody’s _using_ it.”

“ _Really_ don’t think stealing ranks that high on the list of shit we’ve done.”

“Charlie—”

“Mom.”

“Miles.” I add my name in there and raise my hand. “Do you think you can build it?

“Do we have a choice?” Aaron says. And that’s that. We start planning next stops on the map and guessing at what towns or cities might have the parts we need, and how we can find engineering/welding/god-knows-what-else tools. Twenty years is a long time, but the three of them think they can recognize facilities and sciency places (“ _labs_ , Miles. Research labs.”) around the country that might have the stuff we need. We wrap the folders in almost all of the oilcloth we have. When we leave, I close the door. Don’t know why we still do that. Just feels like the right thing to do.

Charlie bounds up to the street sign, almost completely overgrown with vines and leaves. She pulls it aside and points at the sign with a crooked smile. We’re at the intersection of Sherwood and Robin Hood Drive. I sigh and roll my eyes skyward. I’m not religious at all, but sometimes I think the universe has a sense of humor and is just fucking with us. If we make it back, we gotta tell Robyn. They’ll get a kick outta that.


	38. All the Different Ways to Fix Things (Teddi)

“Mmph,” Alani says, which means “thank you” in the language of “mouthful of food I shoved into her face,” before ducking back into the tents. She’s been working in the infirmary pretty much nonstop. We’ve been edging farther and farther northeast to try and root out what’s left of Patriots or slavers or whoever, and a few days ago, they ran into a particularly nasty group of Patriots-turned-raiders/ general assholes. She’s more trained in animals, but as she likes to say, “People _are_ animals, just stupider.” I have to agree on that one. 

When she ducks back out half an hour later for water, I tip a cupful into her mouth. It’s a good system so she doesn’t have to go through the whole sanitation process every time. “How’s Buchannan?” I ask. She makes a face. He insisted on going with the squadrons even though the wound on his leg got infected a few weeks earlier and was still recovering. Of course, someone managed to hit that exact spot with a knife.

“Eh,” Alani gulps, swallows the water. “Still bad. Although, it’s kind of good, cause there was still pus from the old infection, so this kinda opened it up so we could drain it…” Her mouth quirks up at me nodding while trying not to make a squeamish face. “I don’t think we’ll have to amputate. I’ve done too many of those.” She shudders. They tapped her for doctor duty cause she’s smart and has steady hands and experience with surgery, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I kiss her cheek. “You are extraordinary. You always fix things. People. Animals.”

“Awwww,” she smirks at me. “I know. It’s nice to be appreciated though.”

“Alani!” Gene calls from the tent entrance. “Can I have a hand?”

“Yeah, but you can’t have Teddi’s!” she calls back over her shoulder, looking back at me and cracking up along with a few other doctors and soldiers around us. I see Gene shake his head and smile. It’s so much easier to deal with things when you make them not a big deal. People always expect me to be offended, but believe me, jokes are sometimes the only way to cope. And after a war, there’s always more coping to be done. If we can laugh at things other people see as a problem or a weakness, then it takes away their ability to hurt you. This is just a part of me, just like Charlie’s occasional moods, or Alani’s tendency to let her thoughts run away with her. All soothed at least in part through laughter.

I shake myself back to the present and ask Alani, “How come I can still beat you with only one hand, then?” I touch my sword, always at my side.

“Ha ha.” Alani kisses me quickly, and strides back into the tent. I turn back to my task, which is reports. Interviewing fighters, trying to get a concise story that we can send as far as California. I shiver runs down my spine when I think of home. How different it will be, because _I’m_ different. I hope Kaeo is okay. We’re still working on the logistics of transporting messages, so “civilians” can’t send any yet, but he’s going to get the longest letter as soon as we can write it. I hope Charlie and everyone are okay. That’s every second thought in my mind, every second of the day. I focus on writing. It’s beautiful to create something, even if it’s just a status report, after destroying for so long. I add a little drawing to every missive I write. I hope it makes someone smile.


	39. Questions That Math Can’t Answer (Aaron)

[September 14th\- October 19th, 2029]

We’re a little farther north, but thankfully still close enough to pass by some friends. We find a rebel _(well, not rebels anymore—what are we now?)_ town in Waverly, Iowa. We all have several letters from the generals stating we’re allowed to whatever supplies we reasonably need. It still feels weird to not be the outlaws. Not having to hide or steal. To have this trip be so uneventful. I don’t remember what “normal” is like. It used to be stay in your town, travel as little as possible, don’t draw attention to yourself. Then it was run as fast as you can all over the goddamn map, don’t draw attention to yourself. Now it’s travel all over the goddamn map the same way you came from, but you don’t have to be suspicious of everyone you meet. And we get more horses. Hooray.

On average, we pass a rebel town—seriously, what the fuck do we call ourselves now!? —about every three or four days. I’m trying to construct a map in my head, may as well since we have to cross the literal entire Unites States. Maybe I can be of some use if we get back. We even see a few faces we know, which is amazing. It’s the weirdest thing, seeing people you know. Before all this, if you left someone, you’d probably never see them again. That’s why we all pretty much stayed in one place, wherever we landed after the blackout. So it’s a really great feeling seeing familiar faces. There’s a kid Charlie recognizes who looks so happy to see us, you wouldn’t have guessed she only knew him from watch shifts. Yasmin, a woman whose baby Rachel helped deliver over the summer, flings herself at Rachel as soon as she sees us in Pine Ridge, Wyoming. Rachel spins her around, both of them stumbling to a halt to look at the baby in the middle, who’s now almost five months old. I guess delivering someone’s baby bonds you for life. Makes sense. Yasmin tells us that they’re trying to get people as spread out on the map as possible. See who’s out there. Make some connections. See if we can keep this channel of cooperation open. She moved here from Kansas after we kicked out the Patriots. “We,” like I did any fighting. But hey, I did do a lot of math. You try figuring out logistics for anywhere between ten to five hundred people. 

Oh, I should also mention that most of what we’re traveling through is old Native American reservation land. ironic, right? White people really _did_ destroy the world. Just not in the way we expected. It’s beautiful, though. Like you took out all of the distractions so you could just see the world without all the noise. I hate nature but even I can appreciate that. Well, used to hate. Now it’s just, “would rather be indoors.” Because, you know, I don’t have much of a choice.

I’ve never been this far north and east. It’s a weird combination of plains, circular farm fields, and mountains in the distance. The leaves are changing for fall, and I am stunned by how much we’ve done since the spring. Without clocks, it’s hard to keep track of time. You don’t even notice the days at first; the nights happen first. We borrow a few cooler weather items from one of the empty towns. I still feel a chill on the back of my neck like someone is watching, but it also just feels sad. I wonder who wore the coats we borrowed. I hope they don’t mind. Maybe they’d be glad to know they’re still important, still affecting the world in some way.

As usual, we try and keep off main roads. There’s like, one highway for the entirety of the Midwest, but we all agreed it feels weird to be the only things on a hundreds-of-miles stretch of road. It feels weird, too. You can tell it’s emptier out here. We pass an exit sign advertising for Yellowstone. The second-to-last ally town before The Wasteland is Riverton, Wyoming. We decide to leave the horses, a fact which I’m glad about. We agreed that it’s safer to take as few conscious organisms as possible, in case the nanites can brainwash them too. I personally don’t wanna fight seven nano-controlled horses. That’s probably my worst nightmare.

Captain Whelan seems busy and overworked but friendly. I think he knows something’s up. He confirms the other rumors we’ve heard since June of people vanishing, getting up and leaving town. Most people think it’s because of the political unrest and the collapse of the Patriots. Maybe. But probably not. He has some of his lieutenants find us as many supplies as we can carry, and they ride with us to Dubois, where we switch horses and wagons and supplies, until we pass through Grand Teton National Park right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains which we’re taking a really wavy detour to bypass because or else we’d almost certainly get lost and die. They wish us good luck even though they don’t know what we’re doing and take the horses, and just like that, we’ve reached the end. The path is gone. Once we pass the edge of town there’s some feeling of fear, or powerlessness that takes hold of me. After passing through friends for so long, now it’s just us. No one else is stopping or slowing down, but I see it in them too. We’ve reached the end of the shelter. We’re running out into the open now.

“So, what exactly happened?” Miles breaks the silence. We’ve had Neville tell us about a million times, but we make him go through it at least once a day in case there’s anything he forgot, and we haven’t been able to ask him for two days cause we were with the other guys. Neville’s not the kind of dude who forgets things, though. I think we’re all just trying to feel as prepared as possible.

“It was in the old barn,” Neville says in a monotone that’s somehow totally flat and also irritable at the same time. “Connor and I were avoiding the Patriots.” Here, I always notice two things. One, Monroe always stiffens at the sound of his son’s name. He’s still really mad we didn’t tell him sooner. Neville told Rachel what he saw after he calmed down after a few days in the D.C. jail. Monroe didn’t get to know the full thing—i.e., about Connor— until after Itasca, cause or else he would’ve stormed in there like a total idiot and ruined the entire thing. I honestly thought he was gonna kill someone. It took Miles and Neville to hold him back and even then they were having trouble. He almost broke free and decked Miles, but Charlie ducked under and held him back.

_“You know where my son is?” he kept yelling, twisting in their grips. “And you didn’t tell me?”_

_“Knew!” Neville bellowed back. “Get a hold of yourself. He probably followed them. If he’s still there, he’ll be with the others.” He meant with the others who ran off. “If you go after him like this, we’re all dead.” I had and still have absolutely no idea why he suddenly trusts our plans, but at that moment at least, I was glad._

_“How long did you know?” Monroe, for a complete sociopathic dickhead, wears his emotions really clearly on his face. His eyes were full of betrayal and rage._

_Miles shook his head, trying to explain. “Bas, this is why we didn’t tell you. Because you’re acting like this. You’re gonna—”_

_“Don’t.” Monroe stood and looked at him. “Don’t you dare, Miles. He’s my son. My son—” he broke off, turning in a circle. “He could be—they could have—”_

_“He’s not stupid.” Miles said, and Charlie made a noise of disagreement. “Well, he’s not an idiot. He can look after himself.”_

_“If he’s hurt,” Monroe said, his breathing heavy. “I’ll never forgive you, Miles. You hear me? Never.”_

_Miles shrugged. “Okay.” I almost laughed at that. Behind them both, I could see Rachel. She was holding her arms to her chest tight enough that it probably hurt. She was thinking about Danny. She always was, when she looked at him. Monroe._

Secondly, going back to the present, Neville never says they were “running away from” or “hiding” from the Patriots. Like he still has something to prove to somebody. Anyway.

“I saw him.” Neville’s voice doesn’t waver or falter, but something changes anyway. “Jason.” And now it’s Charlie’s turn to face ghosts. Charlie doesn’t look up and straighten her posture like Rachel, who stares it right in the face like she thinks she deserves the pain. Charlie looks away; her shoulders go up. _It’s not fair._ I saw her grow up. It’s not fair. She shouldn’t have this.

“I knew it wasn’t him,” Neville continues. “And I thought I was hallucinating, or dying, or drugged. He—it—told me to go to Bradbury, Idaho. I know Connor didn’t see anyone. Not besides the nanites. I don’t know why. But he asked and I told him what they said, and apparently that was good enough for him. I went east to slaughter the Patriots.” The ease with which he says that last part always chills me. Part of him is broken. He seems to think he’s lost everything. But he’s still as cold and calculating and quite frankly, scary, as he always.

“Which maybe lines up with what I…saw,” Priscilla adds. “The nanotech… infiltrating people’s minds.”

“But did they reach Connor?” Rachel wonders aloud. I think I’m the only one who realizes she’s thinking something else, and I see it too: all the people the nanites did manage to brainwash were older. Not old, but older than Charlie and Connor. Which is what always bothered me in the hellscape they trapped me in—Charlie was my way out. I file that away for future pondering. I could go on about developing brain structures or the effects of continued trauma or the experiences and beliefs of these kids versus us adults or growing up before the blackout or after or the simple effects of time on the human mind, but I have plenty of time to walk and think. Pleeeeenty of time. Dammit. I think I miss the horses.


	40. Signals from the Wasteland (Charlie)

[October 19th—October 27th, 2029]

The Wasteland doesn’t really look any different. I don’t really know what I was expecting. Parts of the bordering nations touch the Wasteland. Honestly, it’s been kind of pretty. Mountains and everything. It’s not like it’s actually barren nothingness. It’s just that no one goes there. Except idiots like us.

My biggest worry isn’t nanos right now, or radioactive wildlife, or whatever else is out here. It’s food. Since there’s no one here except on the edges, there’s no farms. We’ve been rationing like hell, and water’s been okay, but we have to stop and find food every day or so. Thankfully, since there’s not that many people here, the game and edible plants are flourishing. They’re all coming out in the fall too, either one last hurrah before the frosts or trying to bulk up for the winter.

I can’t believe people used to willingly live this far apart. Jesus Christ. If we get back, I am never walking again. We pass like, two houses tops every day. We check most of them. These ones haven’t been cleared out by neighbors because they’re so far away. So some of them have the original occupants, or other squatters. All dead a long time ago. I like to think they wouldn’t mind us taking their stuff since we’re trying to save the world. So far, we’ve found: several maps, empty gasoline cannisters, very old cars, some carabiner clips, rope, pickaxes and other tools, honey which we ate immediately, powdered milk which we mixed and also ate immediately, salt, and someone’s apocalypse storage basement which had thirty packets of dehydrated food. “Thank you, doomsday preppers,” Miles said dryly when we found them. It’s kind of sad. They spent so long preparing for the worst and it didn’t even help. But it did help us, so it wasn’t all for nothing.

We finish checking the basement and go upstairs to do one last sweep. There’s a small bookshelf by the recliner chairs and the fireplace, and I go over even though I know there’s nothing useful over there. It blows my mind that making books used to be a thing you could do. We have the occasional newspaper and I’ve seen maybe one or two books that someone made by hand, but thinking of all of the things we had? Crazy.

I see a small one in between the big murder mysteries and history books and photo albums and reach for it. I yelp and almost throw is across the room when I read the cover.

“What?” Mom’s head shoots up and Miles’s hand goes immediately to whatever weapon is closest. I show them the title, and I see confusion and shock waver their stances. _The Waste Land._ It’s called The Wasteland. Poems. Huh. What’re the odds. The book is completely useless to us except maybe for kindling, but I take it anyway, my expression daring anyone to say anything. Maybe this’ll tell me why this place is called the Wasteland.

I try not to take anything for granted anymore. Words used to be something beyond what they meant on the surface. Rhuka. Sherwood. Trees. Now this. Like codes. Maybe I can translate them, like turning sounds into movements of my hands. There’s something here I can’t quite reach. Like I know the answer. It’s been building in my mind and it’s driving me nuts, so I really hope it’s not the nanos affecting me already. Maybe the answer’s in here. I wonder whose book this is. I wonder if I can write poetry. I’ve never tried. I wonder if Alani or Teddi like poetry. I wonder if I’ll get to show them. It’s so small, it almost floats in my hand, like a leaf. Maybe that’s why my hand is shaking. Or maybe I’m just dehydrated.


	41. A New Way of Hearing (Rachel)

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Monroe complains, not for the first time. Charlie has been reading from the book as we walk. She was reading as we walked, flipping through pages and mumbling pieces out loud, until Neville snapped, “Either read the whole thing or don’t read at all!”, assuming she would stop. She didn’t. Charlie does a little bit at a time, trying to piece it together, see if there’s some meaning in the words that’ll tell us what to do or why this is here. Bas, to absolutely no one’s surprise, doesn’t like poetry. I don’t mind it. It’s not how I usually think, but Charlie’s got a great reading voice. Calm. Flowing. I don’t know much about poetry, but it makes more sense to me when I hear it aloud. I don’t know if there’s any connection between that Waste Land and this one, but at least it gives us something to listen to and focus on.

“I think it’s people talking,” Aaron says, about the jumbled passage she just read.

Priscilla nods. “It is. I think I read this in undergrad, oh, a hundred years ago. I didn’t pay much attention but maybe I should have...”

Charlie starts the next part. The words are a good distraction for our seemingly endless walking, punctuated by quick stops into any maintenance-looking building. We found some weird treatment plant a while back. I borrowed some tools, a welding torch, wires. We don’t even need that much to build it. The beauty of our design was it was simple. It’s so simple I couldn’t believe no one had figured it out sooner. Maybe they just didn’t want to.

“Sweet Themes, run softly…” Charlie’s voice fades in and out of my consciousness. “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends, / Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs/ are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of city/ directors, / Departed, have left no addresses… Sweet Themes, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.” Her voice doesn’t change tone, but I can hear her breath on the last word. I can feel it hammering around in my mind, my eyes, my heart, my lungs. Every so often, we’ll hit a passage that _feels_ familiar. Charlie read us the introduction too; this Waste Land was published after World War I. _Does this mean this is World War III?_ I laugh at myself. No, Rachel, this is your mess. 

I notice that mentally, it feels like it’s getting harder to go forward. I don’t know if that’s actually true, or if I’m just feeling resistance to getting closer to the nanites. We pass several agricultural resources and storage facilities, an A/C store, a Christmas lights shop. I take things from all of them, feeling like this is a full circle, these things that’ve sat defunct and abandoned for twenty years are now useful again.

We reach something called The Craters of the Moon National Monument, which, according to the sign, is a thousand square miles of thousands-of-years-old lava fields and grasslands, named so because it looks like the surface of the moon. It’s stunning. Obviously all our best intel says the fastest way to Bradbury is directly across. I don’t know why. Maybe the nanites wanted to make it harder to follow them. Maybe they’re just dramatic.

The park is about seventy-five miles across, so it shouldn’t take us more than three hours if we go fast. We don’t have to worry about anyone else being here, so we actually take in our surroundings instead of just scanning it for threats. I touch the lava flows, crevasses and valleys and hills. I don’t know if Charlie’s ever even seen a picture of the moon. Maybe in a book when she was five. When was the last time I actually looked at the moon? It seems so far away now. I wonder how far the nanites’ reach extends. If any of the tech or the rovers or the people on the space station had a few more hours from their own internal power, or if they went immediately too because it was connected to ground control…

I catch up to the others at the peak of one of the hills; I can see the end of the lava flows and the descent of the grasslands. The sun will start going down soon; we’ll be out of here by then and hopefully find some abandoned house or barn. “What is that sound high in the air?” Charlie asks, thinking the top of the hill is a good place for a dramatic reading of another stanza, which is fine with me since it takes me out of the deafening noise of my silent thoughts. The wind’s stronger out here in the open so it whips her voice towards and away from me erratically. We all listen.

“Murmur of maternal lamentation”— ( _is that me?)_

“Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth”— ( _here I hear her mouth turn up in a wry smile_ )

“Ringed by flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains 

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers”— ( _here her voice gets ever so slightly faster)_

“Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London” _—_ ( _she’s never seen these cities; does she even know what Alexandria was?)_

“Unreal.” Charlie drops the last word like a leaf falling to the ground, or like a boulder. I can’t tell. She looks up at us and snaps the book shut. “I thought that might be relevant.” With that, she marches down the hill, leaving the rest of us to sort through memories and emotions that have risen to the surface. I don’t know how much she remembers, but I can still see it clearly, it all falling to pieces on that day, planes and bridges and construction sites and generator grids catching fire. I take a shaky breath and follow. I have the sudden question of what the nanites would think of poetry. I don’t even know if it would compute. Maybe it would. I’ve been in unfamiliar territory so long that knowing a definite answer to a question would be more unsettling than not.

Speaking of unfamiliar territory, Miles catches up to me. He and Charlie are plotting something, because every so often she’ll go up to him and say something, and he’ll wave her off, and she’ll look exasperated and yell at him, continue, repeat. _How did I end up loving the two most stubborn people in the universe?_ “Do you really think you can do this?” he says.

“As sure as I am the other seventy times you asked.” I say without looking.

“Sorry. I guess I’m a little…”  
  


“Out of your element?”

I hear him exhale before it’s snatched away by the wind. “Yeah. I can’t fight this one, Rachel. Can’t protect you and Charlie.”

“We can take care of ourselves, you know.”

“I know.” I’m a bit surprised and very warmed at the conviction in his voice. It makes my footfalls feel sturdier and more purposeful. “Your safety is really about me though. Cause if I lost either of you… I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Miles.” Now I look at him and squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. “I’m not letting this kill me.”

“Just those other times?” he asks, his tone joking like it always is, but some old fear rising behind it.

“Yeah.” I let the word out in a breath. “Just those other times.” His grip on my hand grows tighter, the same hand that held a gun to my own head, my own hand that held a razor, the same hands that helped build the nanites and couldn’t stop the nukes and couldn’t handle the weight of all the mistakes I’d made. _The same hands that know how to fix this_ , something reminds me. _The same hands that have people to protect_. The same hands that were held by others when I couldn’t move because if I moved, I would break into a million pieces like the cities that were hit. It’s a funny thing, survival. I wanted to die so many times in my life. So many times, when I felt out of control or like I’d made too many mistakes to deserve to keep on living. I’ve fought my mind my whole life. I’ve fought my _life_ my whole life. Kept choosing the wrong road and wanting to go back, take back what I did, tried to fix it but made it worse, tried to lead with my head but regretted it, tried to lead with my heart but that went wrong too. I wanted to give up and let it take over and destroy it at the same time, this indecision and this guilt and this constant feeling of being wrong and not doing enough. But when the nanites came, tried to take over, I fought. I didn’t want it. Someone to take my mind and let me forget everything. I didn’t want it. I fought. I fought like hell. And I don’t entirely know why, except maybe that being free to feel the pain is more important than being free from all pain, because if nothing ever happens to you did you even really exist at all? All I know is that my brain might be fucked up, but it’s _mine_. All of this is mine, and I didn’t truly realize that until someone threatened to take it from me. I might have truly screwed up, but I can still protect the people I love. So. That’s what I’m going to do. With all my mind, and everything I have left.

I know Miles didn’t hear that ten-second flood of conclusions, but his tighter grip on my hand makes me believe he knows it anyway. I see Charlie in front of us, walking into the descending sun without a second thought. She has the most reason to make it home out of all of us, and I silently vow that no matter what, she’ll get out of here. I know Miles is thinking the same thing. So is Aaron, and probably Priscilla, and maybe even Bas. For some reason, one of my strongest memories is him, and Miles, over with Charlie when she was maybe three. Ben was there too, and I was pregnant with Danny. Memories are tied to strong emotions, so it must’ve been the confusion and adrenaline and happy pain of having so many people I loved in one house. Point being, Charlie might be the only reason we all haven’t killed each other at various points throughout the past few years, and she might be the only common thing we would all sacrifice ourselves for. My chest aches; it feels like everything I’m feeling is about to overflow or burst free from every cell in my body. Usually I feel “outside” of my body, like I’m watching myself from above. Right now, I feel the opposite. I’m so _in_ my body, it’s almost excruciating. I can feel Miles’s hand, every rock beneath my feet, my breathing, the wind, every place my clothes make contact with my skin, the presence of everyone behind me and in front of me. I take it in, even though it hurts. The sensation reminds me that right now, my body, my mind, my self, is _mine_ , and no one can take that away from me.

I make a face at Miles. “What?” he asks.

“When I used to think about what life would be like in 2030… this was _not_ it.”

He laughs, a short sound. I love his laugh; it always sounds like it’s been surprised out of him, which makes it all the more precious to me. “Really? I always pictured us like this.” He dodges my elbow, which means I’ll have to try a new tactic soon. I hold on to the levity, the laughter. I hold on to all of it. Choosing to die is one thing. Walking towards it is another. _Your shadow at morning striding behind you, and your shadow at evening rising to meet you,_ my mind says, watching the lengthening shadows. Poetry gets stuck in your head very easily. That’s how we used to remember complex formulas for tests in grad school, make up stupid songs or rhymes about them. When things were just theory on paper. That’s the problem. Theories have no consequences. But it’s so easy to go from theory to reality. I just hope this new theory will work. Sometimes, when nothing is working, you try the least plausible test. The universe is governed by so many rules, of gravity, of physics, of matter, of energy. But it’s still so random and spontaneous. Sometimes we don’t know why things do what they do. So you don’t have to figure out what the rules _are_ so much as what the rules _aren’t_. And we seem to be exceptionally good at avoiding rules of all and any kind.


	42. Loss and Forgiveness (Miles)

I think the nanos are starting to affect us, cause we’ve been fighting like cats and dogs. Although in my experience, cats and dogs don’t fight nearly as much as people do. It’s like we’re going through all the possible combinations of who’s fighting who—Aaron and Priscilla argued yesterday about I don’t even know what, then me and Rachel, and then Charlie and Rachel started snapping at each other, I had to stop Rachel and Neville from killing each other, then _I_ almost killed Bas, etc. etc. I don’t know if we know how to do anything _except_ fight, so if there’s something to fight, we’ll find it. We’re also sore as hell. My body does not like travelling across the entire goddamn country.

We’ve been walking for an hour in slowly defrosting silence. Rachel squeezes my hand at some point before going to talk to Aaron. I hang back, because I like to make sure everyone’s there. Charlie’s just ahead of me, and I see Neville slow down to say something to her. _Oh boy._ I’m pretty much always prepared to kill this sonovabitch, especially if he keeps blaming Charlie for Jason’s death. What the fuck was she _supposed_ to do? Die?

Charlie straightens her shoulders as that idiot gets closer. He’s definitely just looking to pick a fight. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been there. Picking fights, letting your body take the blows, trying to take out your pain on others, so you don’t have to deal with whatever’s killing you inside. I don’t change my pace. Charlie knows I’m behind her.

“So,” Neville says in his stupid, mocking voice. “What’s the deal with you and those other kids? You like them ‘ethnic’?”

_Fuck him_. My whole body freezes in outrage for Charlie, for Teddi, for Alani. He must’ve seen them, or heard her talking about them. If Charlie was a dog, her hackles would be up. I honestly didn’t even expect even Neville to say something _this_ shitty. I just keep my steps even so she knows I’m here if she needs anything. As much as I want to jump in, this is hers, and we both know it.

“What is your _issue_?” she spits when she gets her breath back, more outrage in her voice than I’ve ever heard whenever he usually blames her for Jason. “Do you like, get off on being an absolute jerk?”

Neville shrugs, like this is a normal conversation and not some completely twisted and destroyed man who has nothing to drive him except the pain of others. And being a dickhead. “Like mother, like daughter. I wouldn’t expect anything less from someone whose mother slept with her husband’s brother.”

I see in her stance when she snaps. “Why? You jealous?” Charlie plants her feet to face him. “Look, I know you don’t have a heart so you can’t possibly understand feelings, and like, empathy, but actually, your opinion means nothing. Yeah, so what, my family is a godfucking mess. So’s everything else. And if that’s what makes them happy, then I’m happy, cause god knows we could use it. So get the fuck out of my face and stop being so creepy and weird. Why are you obsessed with us anyway? Unlike you, I don’t base myself on other people’s opinions. I don’t chase after power and approval and lick the boots of anyone higher up than me because I don’t have any goddamn self-esteem.” _Perfect_ shot. Kid’s got good aim. “You’re the only one playing this game anymore. Everyone else is dead. And before you blame me for Jason again, you’re the one who turned him to the Patriots in to save your own ass. So choke on that.” Charlie gives me the briefest glance before striding ahead, anger in every footstep. And I’m proud. Prouder than I have any right to be. She knows how to stand up for other people. That’s more than most people know how to do.

I wonder what Ben would think. I think he’d be proud of her too. I remember he was in my dream last night; I think it might have been a memory. We were sitting on the couch and talking. I don’t remember about what, just that he leaned forward and said “Miles. It’s okay.” I can hear him saying it, as clearly as if he told it to me yesterday. Wait— I remember now— it was after I’d just come back from my second tour and it left me a little more fucked up than usual. I accidentally crashed his car a little going too fast a little too drunk. I remember thinking, no, _knowing_ , that his saying “it’s okay” for two things. One, that I crashed his car, and two, that I was hurting. He was telling me it was okay to feel it—all of the pain and anger and awful terror and fear, not of the war, but what people did during it. I should have told him the truth. I wish I’d been strong enough to do that. I hope this will make up for it. Fixing this. Getting Charlie back. I hope it’s enough. I wish I could ask him. I wish I could think about him without feeling the overwhelming surge of guilt and dread that always tries to drown me.

We’ve been passing all of these old houses. Abandoned. They should be eerie, but they’re more sad, somehow. Who knows they’re out here? Does anyone remember who lived here? One of the lines from Charlie’s book keeps coming back to me:

_In this decayed hole among the mountains_

_In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing_

_Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel_

_There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home._

_It has no windows, and the door swings_

_Dry bones can harm no one._

_Dry bones can harm no one_. I don’t know what Ben would’ve thought, or said, or done, but he’s not here. I wish he was. He deserved better. Better than me. I hope he was happy. With Charlie and Danny. With Maggie. I don’t think I deserve to think or even hope he would’ve forgiven me. But honestly, I don’t know. People have a way of being more than you thought they would.


	43. Honesty (Charlie)

I keep having weird dreams. I had one last night. It was me and Dad when I was little, except then I turned back, Dad was Miles? Would Dad be angry? Would he feel betrayed? I don’t even think I’ve completely processed that. Didn’t have the time. Just screaming in the dark sometimes, waking up feeling like my heart’s being ripped out again, that day when everything went wrong. Or at least, when it all caught up to me. But in the dream, everything was light. Hazy. Someone threw me into the air, caught me. I floated. Danny was there. And I think Nora. Actually, I think everyone was. Chains of people, linked by hands, stretching back as far as I could see. Grandma was there. It’s fading now. I could see them when whoever it was tossed me into the air. With the release of gravity, at the height of the arc. Like they were just out of reach…

We’re close. I know we are. I know because we’ve been more off than ever. Snapping at each other. Getting lost in our thoughts. I don’t even know how to tell if the nanites are in our heads. Maybe we’re just psyching ourselves out? I barely know what day it is and the only reason I know we’re not stuck in some endless loop of days is because the nights are getting colder.

Priscilla snaps a stick as she turns over and the rest of the dream vanishes. I unroll out of my bedroll, the scenery the same as the day before. Plains. Scrubby grasslands. Far away hills. Frost. I shiver and curl my toes inside my socks. We’re gonna have to haul ass to miss winter. And believe me, I am _not_ planning on traveling when it’s snowing.

Mom was up as soon as it was light out, working on the Rhuka. She says it’s almost done. It’s about the size of my hands next to each other. Still not sure what it does. It looks incredibly intricate and I’m not sure how we’re gonna carry it without it breaking. I asked how it works and she said it needs to charge, so I hope the sun comes out soon. She explained a little how it works, how she made it. The mechanics are all a blur in my brain, trying to understand how solar panels or hydropower works, so what I most remember is holing up in an old cement basement workshop the past few nights, fire reflecting off of welding goggles, Aaron holding wires steady while Mom fused them, Priscilla using tweezers to put something incredibly tiny inside something not much bigger, pieces of what we’d scavenged laid on the floor on a tarp like treasure. We opened the tiny windows and the cool night air felt like a kiss against my face. The papers and blueprints and maps. The glowing lines of the filaments. The fire made it look like a dream.

“Is it done yet?” I squat down next to Mom. She’s just fiddling with it at this point. It’s as ready as it’ll ever be.

“I’ll let you know,” she says, the strain behind her words and in her face. She releases a breath and rubs her forehead. “Jesus. I feel like I gave birth again.”

“Am I being replaced?”

“Maybe I won’t screw this one up.” She gives me a wry smile, as always, guilt behind her words.

I don’t have the energy or the words right now to explain all the things I think, many of which is “it’s not your fault,” and “it’s okay,” and “we all did the best we could and yeah maybe I was and am still pissed but we don’t have time for that right now, and even though this whole thing is a goddamnit dumpster fire I’m glad you’re here,” so I go with what I can. “It’ll work,” I say, with all the confidence I have, which is, surprisingly, a lot. _Does it count as confidence if you’re out of options after this?_

Mom pauses to look at me. “Thank you.” she says, and I can tell she means for more than this, but I’m not quite sure for what else.

You can feel the change. We spend most of the day quiet, lost in our thoughts. I notice I’ve been using The Waste Land as a worry stone of sorts, and now the corner’s even more bent. As we get closer to where we think our destination is, the tension in the air rises. We’re all super jumpy. The Rhuka doesn’t look any different, but I imagine it’s buzzing with almost-electricity. We pick a spot to break camp as the sun starts to set. We can’t be more than an hour or two from Bradbury. Just thinking the name this close to it feels weird, like the nanos will hear, like they’re fucking Voldemort or something.

“So what’s the plan?” Monroe breaks the anxious silence we’ve been walking in.

“Find the town. Kill the nanos. Rescue the people. Walk back across the whole country.” Miles states, ticking them off on his fingers.

Everyone looks at Mom, who shrugs. “I hate to say this, but Miles is actually right.” Miles looks triumphant and Mom’s glance tells him not to push his luck. I shove down the feeling of last night’s dream.

“What about Connor?”

“If he’s there, we’ll find him.” Mom doesn’t mention what kind of shape he might be in.

Monroe lets out angry breath. “So I might have just wasted my time trekking across the country for a stupid piece of junk”—I think that’s a little unfair; the Rhuka might be made of junk but it definitely looks like it’ll work—“when I should’ve been looking for Connor?”

“Nobody asked you to come,” Mom snaps, and I can tell this is probably gonna end bad. There’s only so long a fuse burns; sooner or later it’s gotta explode.

“Aren’t you people supposed to rescue people? Isn’t that your superhero job description or something?” (Miles looks pained; he also knows where this is heading.)

“ _If_ he’s there, we’ll get him. He’s not really the main concern right now, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not the only person in this goddamn world.”

“If Charlie was in danger—”

“ _Don’t_ you dare bring her into this.” (hey guys I’m right here and to be honest this is worse than my nightmares because believe me you do _not_ wanna see these two fight.)

“So I’m not allowed to care about my kid? —”

“Like you give a shit about anyone unless they’re useful to you.”

“Sorry I’m not the heartless monster you want be to be, Rachel. Do _you_ even care about saving the life of my son?” I see it ever so slightly on his face, the realization that he fucked up.

Mom stops dead her tracks. “Like you cared about the life of _my_ son?” she hisses, so much anger and loss in her voice that Monroe stops and the rest of us reel back. She spins and marches off into the trees, nowhere specific, just away.

Miles looks back and forth from Monroe, to Mom, to the rest of us, and back to Mom. “What the fuck, Bas,” he says, and goes after Mom.

Monroe stares after them and then walks away like he’s gonna go sulk in the woods and leave the rest of us to do the work of breaking camp. And I lose my shit for the second time in two days. All my frustration boils over and I stride after him. “Hey!” I yell, not caring if anything hears me. He doesn’t turn, because he’s a jackass. “Leave my mom alone. She’s been through enough, and you don’t get to fucking talk.”

That stops him. “I don’t get to talk? _I_ don’t get to talk? Charlie, the reason we’re in this mess is because of your mom. She and Miles are the reason Connor’s in danger.”

“Sorry, did you forget the part where you were a psychopathic murdering dictator for five years?” I spit back. I’m so mad I legitimately cannot see straight and if I thought I could do it I might shoot him. “Stop blaming everyone else, you selfish son of a bitch. This is your fault Connor’s gone.” He flinches the tiniest amount and I know I got it. “You’re the one who put those stupid ideas into his head. You’re the one who promised him a goddamn army like this is the fucking Roman empire. You’re the one who was too dangerous for him to be around, and if he had, maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess right now!” Shit, I think I’m talking about myself now. If I’m being honest, I think that was why I liked Connor, because we both got fucked over by our parent’s decisions even though they were missing for most of our lives.

“In case you’ve forgotten, _Charlotte_.” Monroe draws out my full name obnoxiously. “I don’t have to be here. I could’ve left you all to die going back for those morons in the church. But I wanted to show my son I could be better. And look where it got me.”

“Same place it got everybody else!” I cast my arms around at this nothingness. “You’re not better than the rest of us because you’re trying to be good, or whatever. You’re just not the norm. Most things? Suck. This is just us trying to get back to base level. So _stop_ going after my mom.”

“Your _mom_ is no goddamn saint either—”

“Yeah! No shit! None of us are! We’re all awful! But some of us are trying.” My voice is hoarse from holding back from full-out screaming.

“Oh,” Monroe says, nodding mockingly. “So _you’re_ the expert. Little Charlie Matheson, all grown up and whoring around with her pals like she has a clue what the world is really like.” _How does he know about that?_ “You’re not subtle,” he taunts. “I saw you with them. I see how you talk about them. Do you really think they’re gonna want to be with you when they know what you did?”

I can’t tell if he’s threatening me or them, and I am frozen in panic and something like mortification and a hell of a lot of fury, and _why did he use that as a weapon_ _of all things_ and _I’m so_ sick _of people treating me like that’s bad_ but something in some part of me clicks and I lift my head. “What about you?” Three words, and things make so much more sense. Three words that aren’t _those_ three words but that’s what I mean. Even though internally I’m still gasping for air, I lean forward and say, “At least they love me back. At least I told them.” I’m breathing like I just ran a marathon and this realization knocks me back into my body as the anger mixes with something like sadness or sympathy. I’m half talking to myself now, as I say, “That’s why. That’s why you’re always here. That’s why none of you can leave it alone. That’s why we keep doing the same things. That’s why you’re here, too. For them.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Monroe steps back from me, looking like a cornered animal. But I’ve got him. I know it.

Part of me wants to laugh and part of me wants to cry. _Why are things so complicated?_ Grandpa told me love is the simplest thing in the world. Maybe. But what you do with it? That’s a lot harder. I reach for the nearest tree trunk and dig my nails into it to keep myself steady. My mind is spinning with possibilities, with the meeting of my present and my mom’s—Miles’s—everyone’s— past, with how things could have gone different and why they went like they did and a billion other thoughts about how I guess I just didn’t see it until I felt it myself, how we blind ourselves to things on purpose sometimes so we don’t have to face them, how that just means someone else has to take the blow later. I think I’m mirroring him right now, eyes wide, breathing panicked, the bizarre, terrifying feeling of your enemy knowing one of your biggest secrets.

I look towards where Mom and Miles went, and when I look back, Monroe is gone. There are too many things swirling inside me, a maelstrom that is only contained because I know that Mom and Miles and Aaron and Priscilla don’t have the capacity to deal with this right now. So I keep it. Calm my breathing enough to go and help clear space for the smokeless fire. I’m learning the price to keeping things hidden, trying to lock it away like that’ll make it vanish, but this will have to wait until after. I love Aaron, because when I come back, he doesn’t say anything, just mouths, “Are you okay?” at me. I shake my head, but he doesn’t push it, and we build a fire in the empty space where all of those truths just were.


	44. I've Got a Good(?) Feeling About This (Rachel)

About a minute later, I hear footsteps running behind me, scattering the leaves. I don’t bother turning because I know it’s Miles.

“Rachel—” he skids to a halt beside me. The setting sun silhouettes him; around him, winter light.

“Don’t! —” I stop in my tracks and spin towards him. “I don’t wanna hear it. I know we need him. I just… is it too much to ask to never see him again?” I’m not mad at Miles, and he knows that, and his eyes soften, and he tries to pull me closer, but I can’t do it.

“I can’t, Miles.” All the energy suddenly drains out of me. “Every time I see him, I see Danny. I see you, doing things you’d never do on you own. I see—” _I see me._ _I’m just as bad. I’m worse._ I step away because I cannot do this anymore. Everything is too entangled. I’m connected to all of these people in ways that I cannot explain, and every time I take a step it feels like they’re cutting into me, the razor-sharp strands of this web I wove for myself.

“Rachel, what—” Miles grabs shoulders and I realize I’ve started shaking. “I know that being around Bas brings up a lot, but—”

“I kissed him.” I blurt out, my heart deciding to tell the truth before my mind catches up. Deciding that if we’re going in to fight to the nanites, we’re going all in. That if we’re making a new world after this one, after two years of this and so many before, I’m laying it all bare so I can let it burn up in smoke.

Miles just stares at me. “What?”

“Bas. I kissed him. He kissed me. I don’t know.” My voice feels detached from my brain, like I’m out-of-body trying to explain a problem I can’t solve. “It was almost eight years ago. When—” I can’t finish that sentence. “It was before—” I can’t finish that one either, but my body and my psyche still bear the scars. “We—we were alone, and neither of us were stable, and I was so scared and alone, and I _knew_ what he did, but he was there, and—” my voice breaks and I half-laugh as I swallow back tears because the last thing I want right now is to make this more about me. “He was there, Bas, we’d been friends our whole lives and he reminded me of you, and I think I reminded him of you, and we didn’t actually sleep together because I pushed him away and he got mad but I don’t know, I don’t know Miles, I don’t know,”—I’m rambling now and I hate the look on Miles’s face which is just pure incomprehension and heartbreak that goes deeper than what I’m telling him, but my mind isn’t thinking about that right now— “and I hate myself for it every day, because _what kind of person almost sleeps with their son’s murderer?_ ” That’s it. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. Every day since it happened. I know that one didn’t follow the other like that but I can’t get it out of my head, because I can’t get anything out of my head.

Miles is still staring at me. “ _What_?” he says again, with more emphasis like saying it louder will help. I can see him trying to wrap his mind around this. He starts walking one way, then another, then stops and looks at me again. “ _What?!_ ” He doesn’t sound angry so much as completely stunned.

“I—I’m sorry, Miles.” I drop my hands and concentrate on not collapsing. All the anxiety and fear and adrenaline leave my body now that I said it out loud.

“Hold up.” Miles raises a hand. “So you’re telling me… you and Bas,” he gestures back in the direction of the others. “Made out? And—” He shakes his head. “Rachel, you have worse taste than I thought.”

“What?” I’m still in flight or fight mode. I was not expecting the joke reflex, but I guess I should’ve. This is Miles, after all.

“I mean… Bas? Come on. While he was… you know. And you were—you know. Captive. I didn’t think you were into that kind of stuff.” Somehow, there’s mischief in his eyes, like we’re just flirting or he’s being a smart ass.

Now it’s my turn to stare at him uncomprehendingly. I can feel a completely untimely laugh bubbling up, and I clap my hand over my mouth to stop it. 

“I—Rachel, what should I say? This was, what, eight years ago?”

“But you were—”

“Just as fucked up as you.” I can tell he’s remembering, back when he was stone cold to the world and just as harsh. “Do I like it? Not really.” He exhales and rubs the back of his neck. “Am I mad? I mean, yeah, but only cause I don’t want to think of Bas anywhere near you or Charlie. I mean… wow. That’s a bombshell, but it’s really not any worse than the other shit we’ve done…?” I still can’t bring myself to move, like if I do, his reaction will change. “Rachel—” Miles almost laughs and takes my hands. “Did you think this was what would make me hate you? You almost singlehandedly ended the fuckin world.” I don’t have the energy to smack him but I’m thinking about it, and he can tell, cause I can see the smile in his eyes. “I’m not a good person, Rachel. I’ve killed people. Tortured ‘em. Helped other people do worse. This isn’t the worst thing you coulda done.”

“I wouldn’t have done it at all if I’d known…” I trail off as tears choke me and I rest my forehead against him. I don’t even know if that’s true. Sometimes we just do things. Sometimes there’s no deeper thought than just the action.

“Yeah, well, I think we all woulda done things a little differently.”

“I can’t think about him—Danny—" I take a shaky breath. “Without thinking about that. I can’t look at him without feeling him…”

“Hey.” Miles makes me look at him. “You’re not responsible for what everyone else does. Did.”

I breathe that in and nod past the tears that track through the probable layers of dirt on my face. “Neither are you.” He doesn’t move but I can tell that thought didn’t occur to him until just now.

Miles makes a face. “Shit.”

“What?” My heart starts racing again and I prepare for the worst.

“I just realized we’re like goddamn Star Wars.”

“...What?”

“You know, everybody making out with everybody, one family fucking up the whole world...”

“Miles. That is without a doubt the lamest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Mmm.” He shakes his head. “I can definitely say it’s not.”

I laugh, and the sound echoes in the space in my ribcage where a huge weight used to be. We stay here for a few minutes, leaning on each other, wrapped up until I can’t tell where my body and his divide. When it starts getting too dark, we turn back towards the others. Miles stops suddenly and I turn, his hand in mine. “What is it?”

“It’s just… never mind.” He looks like a deer in the headlights. “I just… yeah.” I don’t push it. He’ll tell me when he’s ready. It might take a while for us to let go of every secret, but we’re moving forward, and right now, that is more than enough.


	45. Backed Into a Corner (Again) (Aaron)

[October 28th, 2029]

We are doing what we do best, which is: repress our feelings and hope they go away! Yay! I don’t really know what happened, but I do know things were extremely awkward last night. Nobody was looking each other in the eyes. Thankfully, we all have something else to focus our sights on now: Bradbury. The town of nanites.

Pros: it’s entirely flat land, so we can be as far off in the distance as far as we can get (which is about a mile) behind the single large boulder in the area while still keeping it in our sights. Cons: it’s entirely flat land so they can also see _us_. Judging from the tracks and the marks on the surrounding land, there’s at least a few hundred people there. Rachel’s been passing the Rhuka from hand to hand anxiously, and she’s clutching it so hard I’m worried it might break. Kidding. That thing had three supercharged brains running on terror and last-ditch-energy building it. It’s probably gonna outlast us all. I hope so, anyway, cause I’m thinking we won’t be lasting much longer… _Shut up brain, shut up brain, this isn’t helpful shut up brain._ Wow, what an incredible song I have composed, too bad no one else can hear it since there’s no way to record it. _Okay, now you’re nervous rambling, stop it._

“Okay, that’s it.” Charlie says. “We just gotta go for it. We’ve been surveying for three hours.” (Which was before dawn. The sun is barely above the horizon right now.) “No one’s done anything. Nada. Either they know we’re here or they’re asleep.” Monroe snorts at that.

I’m not sure I can move. I’m pretty sure I’m frozen to this spot, and for once my fear is warranted. I don’t know how we’re gonna do this. Even if the Rhuka does work, what if they stop it? What if they stop _us_ before we can use it? There’s too many variables. This is a horrible plan. But we don’t have any others. There’s no protocol for this. No precedent. We made something that got away from us, a snowball effect past the end of the world.

Priscilla, to my surprise, stands up first. “Let’s go,” she says, her tone leaving no room for argument.

“What?” I say.

“I’m done with these things. They’re bullies. And honestly? They’re just super annoying.”

“Hell yeah,” Charlie says, rising as well. “Let’s go.”

“Hold on,” Rachel says, still crouching on the ground. “We can’t just go in there. We need an in. And I think I know it. They know a lot, but they’re not all-knowing.” We all stare at her. Miles gestures for her to continue. “They can only control your body if they’re in your _mind_.” I think I see where she’s going. “They can move trees, and inanimate biological organisms, but I haven’t seen them move anything inorganic.”

“They can only go so far,” I say slowly. “We’re too complicated.”

Rachel nods. “They’re an incredibly complex neural network, but so are we. They’re just one hivemind. We’re a million individual minds with a million other processes happening at once.”

“They can’t move us unless we’re completely gone,” I realize. “When I was… seeing them, with the…” I don’t like the think about the burning, but thankfully everyone knows what I mean. “They couldn’t move me. Just trick me.”

“So their brainwashing takes up their attention…” Priscilla sits back down, thinking hard. “Even if they lobotomize a group, they still have to work out how to move us.”

“They can’t move us until they control us.” I lean back, seeing a potential plan. “They’re stuck in our bodies, too.”

“And with this many people, even if they’re advancing every day…”

“They probably won’t check unless we’re doing something suspicious.”

“Probably. That’s great.” Miles isn’t fast enough to dodge Charlie’s elbow.

“It’s weak. But it’s something.” Rachel says. Her eyes are still uncertain. 

“No. It tracks. They think they’re above us now.” My eyes unfocus at the sky, theorizing what leaps the nanites might have taken. “They’re not gonna pay attention to us unless we’re doing something they don’t want. They don’t see us as a threat anymore. More like… babies.”

“Ew.” Charlie makes a face.

“I don’t know what kinda childhood you had,” Miles says. “But even I know that’s not how you take care of a baby.”

“We gotta be taught.” I drum my fingers on my knee, trying to get in the tiny robots’ heads. “There’s so many of us running around that they’ll only bother to drop by if we’re acting up. Or else they would’ve just taken over all our minds already. They have too many things to do to control everything all the time. If they were gonna catch us, they woulda done it already. We’re inside their territory. Since they haven’t, the next logical conclusion is that they won’t.”

“That is…” Priscilla trails off.

“A big leap.” Rachel finishes, but I can see in both of their eyes the same connections that I’m making.

“No,” I look at them, feeling a swell of pride I haven’t felt in years. I forgot what it was like to make things. To imagine. To see what we can come up with when we put our brains together. To be more than just survival. “It’s full circle.”

“Sorry,” Neville drawls, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I know I don’t have a degree in nuclear physics, but isn’t the issue that these _things_ ,” (he says ‘things’ the way you’d say ‘cockroach’) “that they’re far more advanced than us? We won’t be able to fool them.”

Priscilla shakes her head, rocking her whole body. “They’re smart, but not yet smart enough to figure out how to learn from their mistakes because they were programmed to _not make_ _mistakes_.”

“They developed self-consciousness but not self-awareness,” Rachel announces. “They can’t reflect on their actions. Figure out the loopholes.”

“Unpredictability…” Charlie trails off. She always catches up first. I always wonder what she would’ve done if she was a normal kid with a normal world. She’s not dumb, I can tell you that.

“We’re doing the dumbest thing possible…” Miles is catching up too.

“So they won’t see us coming?” Monroe adds hesitantly.

I nod. “They haven’t analyzed that part of human behavior. Just the generalities, our patterns, our history. They know what we do in groups. Not individually. Not when we’re out of options. People tend to think that technology is perfect. Like it’s completely objective. But it’s not. It’s made my humans with human fallacies and biases. So, by that logic, whatever consciousness and subjectivity they inherited would be imperfect too. What’s the last stage of development in people?” I didn’t even realize but I seem to have jumped up and started pacing. Everyone looks at me. “Self-reflection! Empathy! Introspection! They can’t _think_ about their own _thinking_ yet! They won’t know if they’re wrong. They can only see us as _them_ ; smaller versions of the nanobots. Logical. Predictable. Always. They don’t have the capacity to think outside of themselves yet.”

“That’s what we did.” Rachel says, laying down the words like she’s laying down a final sword stroke. “We didn’t think past ourselves. We didn’t think about if _they_ started to think. Became separate. And that’s the stage they’re at right now. Solutions. Not consequences. Not unintended, unexpected actions.”

“Well fuck,” Miles sits back, summing up what we’re all thinking. Could it really be that easy? Could they really be taken down by what took _us_ down? I hope so. Because we’re about to walk across the plain and find out.

“Look.” Charlie points in the distance while dropping flat to the ground. We all follow in various levels of grace and athleticism. About half a mile off, there’s a group of brainwashed people heading for Bradbury. How do I know they’re brainwashed? Cause no one else would be walking this way. “What if we join them?” 

Monroe, to everyone’s surprise, is the first to agree. “Why not?” Our confusion shows. “Hey, it beats sitting around with our thumbs up our asses,” he says defensively.

“Much as I hate to side with Bas,” Miles looks over at the town. “I’m with Charlie. I trust Aaron.” I blink in surprise. “He’s never been wrong before.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I offer.

“Hey, I’m trying to compliment you here.”

“We should split up.” Rachel asserts. She doesn’t ever suggest things so much as let you know what the plan is gonna be.

“I know that makes more sense strategically,” I say, shifting my feet. “But that’s literally the way ever horror movie in the history of ever starts.”

“Well I’ve never seen a horror movie,” Charlie says, shouldering her backpack. “So let’s go.”

I don’t mean to laugh but I do, at her logic that I guess makes sense, her determination to ignore all of our old rules from the old world. We split into two groups; one will come from the east and the other from the west. Charlie, Miles, and Monroe, the fastest runners, will take the east, since they have to go around behind the crowd and join from the other side. Technically, Miles isn’t the fastest on account of getting the shit beat out of him for twenty plus years because he’s a dumbass, but like hell he’s leaving Charlie with Monroe. That leaves me, Priscilla, Rachel, and Neville. Hopefully he doesn’t stab us in the back before we get there. On that happy note, we head for the gathering and I practice doing my best, blank-eyed, mindless expression. Time to test our acting skills.

“Hey,” Rachel falls in step with me. “How’re you holding up?”

“Eh.” I say, tilting my head from side to side. “We’re just going to face the monsters that we created. We’ll probably die. So, fine.”

Rachel bites her lip to keep from crying suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

“Rachel—” I don’t know how to say this more ways. It’s not only her fault. It’s all of us. Not just me, her, Priscilla and Peter. All of us. So, I just say “Stop it. You’ve pulled me out of enough self-pity sessions. Now it’s your turn.”

She flashes a smile, so quick I almost miss it. “What would I do without you.”

I shrug. “I dunno. You’d probably be dead.”

That gets a short laugh. “Definitely.” She means it though, which surprises me. “Aaron, you’ve been with me no matter what. You’re the only one who’s never given up on me. I’m really glad you’re here.”

Now it’s my turn to almost cry. “Me too.” Even though I would rather be doing literally anything else than walking into this literal hell, I also wouldn’t. There’s so many things I wish I did differently. There are so many mistakes I made. If we get out of this, I’m literally going to have so many trauma-related issues. More than I already do. But it’s worth it for these people. My family. Sometimes I feel like I watched Charlie grow up _for_ Rachel, cause she couldn’t be there. Like we’re… I dunno. Friend-soulmates. I think she knows what I mean cause she gives my hand a quick squeeze before we get too close to Bradbury. As dangerous as I know showing feelings or independence is right now, I’m not worried. I’d almost like to see the nanites try. I feel stronger than I did when we were fighting them before. I think this is what biologists would call survival mode. The ability of an animal to accomplish feats that would have been nearly impossible for them to do before. Like calmly and slowly walking into the last place anyone on earth should be. Is this what the army felt like at the Black Gates? Why is The Lord of the Rings so applicable to my life? Am I Sam? I always identified with Sam. Rambling again, Aaron. Here we go.


	46. Wisps of Smoke, Shattered Mirrors (Priscilla)

I’m not as scared as I thought I would be. Some naïve part of me thinks that since they nanites controlled me once before, I’ll be able to recognize it if they do it again. Which is untrue, but it makes me feel better all the same. The weird part is that a lot of these people aren’t entirely brainwashed yet. They’re not walking like I did. Aaron tried to describe it to me, he said I was moving like someone who’d walked onto an alien planet. Like who knew the concept of walking but not how to execute it. Like someone who’d been missing a sense of sight or hearing or taste or touch and suddenly gained it.

I take a chance. “Where are we going?” I whisper to the woman next to me. The growing light gives me a clearer picture of the town. It’s run-down, barren. It seems to stop the sun’s rays, or absorb them.

She gives me a look; I can’t tell if it’s suspicion or just reservation. “To the town. Didn’t you get the message?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, trying to look appropriately awed and overcome with emotion. This must be what Neville was talking about. People seeing their dead family members, friends, lovers. The nanites are targeting the weak. Not in a derogatory sense, but people who are just broken or grieving enough to take the bait. The thing with the simulation is, you _know_ something is wrong. Or at least slightly off. But depending on how desperate you are, you won’t care. You’ll take the false reality over the painful truth. That’s what I see in these people. The same feeling that I get when I think about Maya and Theresa. I promise them every night that as soon as this threat is gone, I will find them. I don’t know how. But I will. I feel that promise like a coal burning in my chest, where my heart is.

“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” the woman says, seemingly unconcerned about the mystery.

“I still don’t understand,” some guy near us wonders aloud. “I saw him die…”

I catch Rachel’s eye near the back of the crowd. We’ve been trying to figure out exactly how the mind control works. Rachel thinks they target the cerebrum and slowly change the physical structure of your brain, erasing memories or your grasp on reality. The cerebrum controls memory, analysis, feeling. Once they get that, they can do anything. I’m fine only because I wasn’t in that state for too long. By the looks of it… some of these people have been walking for weeks. Ragged clothes, gaunt faces, worn out shoes, injured feet… and none of them seem to care. Like the nanites were leading them on, giving them just enough of… whatever they do to keep them coming. I have a thought suddenly, and I concentrate on keeping my expression impartial for a moment. I was never a neurosurgeon or the like, but I know brain function is measured in concepts of electricity. If the nanites have all of the electricity, they be using that to manipulate people’s minds? _Damnit, I really wish I’d had some of these thoughts_ before _we got here_. Adrenaline really does wonders for your thought process.

The town itself looks normal. Small. Decrepit buildings. Definitely abandoned before this. I see evidence of recent habitation though—laundry, patch jobs on roofs, cleaner windows. Who the hell would build a town out here anyway? It’s literally in the middle of nowhere. I spot a commemorative plaque on the wall of the singular bar. _Welcome to Bradbury_ , it proclaims. _One of the last original boomtowns left in the United States_. Ah. That makes sense. Gotta love nostalgia, even though it’s almost always wrong.

We stop in what can only be called the center of town, even though I can almost see from one end of Bradbury to the other. I turn in a circle and have to restrain myself from reacting. Opposite the town hall is that _stupid_ , _creepy_ , _piece_ of _shit_ clown sign that’s been haunting my nightmares. I know Aaron sees it to, because he casts me the quickest glance. And then it gets worse: the sign lights up. This time, we don’t have to pretend. We’re just as amazed and astounded as the rest of the crowd. Even though we knew the nanites could do this—we’ve seen it—it’s still so incredibly staggering. Electricity. Right in front of my eyes.

Some guy I don’t recognize stands up in front of the crowd. “Welcome one, welcome all!” His voice carries over the small crowd. “Welcome to Bradbury. Welcome to the town of miracles.” I wince. That’s what Peter called it. And maybe it does seem like that. Maybe sometimes the nanites _do_ do good. But most of the time, they just fall to the same things that people do, because that’s how we programmed them. To learn. And what a place to learn in…

Someone else steps up. “Here, we are creating a utopia.” I have to restrain myself from making a face. _Yeah right_. “Here, there will be no fighting. No war. No anger. Simply peace. And happiness.” A beatific smile spreads across their face. At least, it would be beatific if it wasn’t so empty. We have a problem. It’s gonna be hard to tell the difference between who’s being controlled by the nanites and who’s had their neurons remapped. I don’t even know if the nanites are here. I mean, obviously they’re _here_ , but I don’t know where they’re focusing. There’s billions of them, but we didn’t program them to be infinite. We programmed them to find a problem and fix it. We were stupid and programmed them to find the most efficient, most helpful way. We seem to have made them want to attain perfection where we couldn’t. Which means they’ll put every resource where the biggest problem is. Which means they won’t just stop at brainwashing people, because they didn’t have it quite right. They wanted two things: to make us perfectly happy and amenable, _and_ to feel and experience things with a physical body. Which means they’ll be working on fine-tuning their manipulation of our brain structures. Which means they’ll be spending less focus on those of us who are already partially brainwashed. Which means we might have a shot at pulling this off.

I drag myself back to the present moment where another woman has finished giving her part of the speech. I think I see what they’re doing. Hivemind. No single leader. That way, there’s no conflicts of power. Except then I see him. Connor. My first feeling is panic, because if Monroe sees him, there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll blow our cover right now. But he can’t be that stupid and rash, can he? _Jeez, how did I get here?_ Arguing with myself whether or not one infamous douchebag warlord has the self-restraint to not get us all killed immediately. Did I mention I swear when I’m stressed? I feel like everyone’s staring at me, knowing we’re not supposed to be here. But no, they’re all totally focused on Connor and the next speakers. Finally, they let us go.

“Go, my friends!” Connor spreads his arms. From how he introduced himself, he seems to be the spokesperson of sort. But not brainwashed. I wonder how he cut that deal. “Meet your neighbors. Get to know your utopia. Make your homes welcoming for the next group of pilgrims. And revel in the magnificence of what we thought we had lost!” At this, streetlights spark and the telephone lines buzz, and Connor vanishes among the chaos. His face. Impassive. But underneath—worry.

What a performance. I add “theatrics” to the list of things the nanites have learned. As the crowd disperses, I try and find my people out of the corner of my eye. Hopefully we can all pretend to wander in different directions and meet up somewhere. I focus on keeping my face neutrally positive and walking calmly, even though what I want to do is get out of here as fast as I can. Deep breaths, Priscilla. Do it for Theresa. For Maya. For the rest of this screwed up world.


	47. Kids, Amirite?  (Miles)

I’ve decided. This is definitely worse than the Patriots. Sure, they had guns. Explosives. Agent Orange. But did they have mindless drones? No they didn’t.

Charlie and I wait till we’re about half a mile down before breaking from the crowd and ducking into a small alleyway.

I double check to make sure we weren’t followed before turning back to Charlie. “So that was….”

“Yeah.” Charlie looks as freaked out as I feel, which is a lot. I don’t know what I was expecting. That’s it. I just had no idea what to expect, so this isn’t any better or worse, but it just feels so _wrong,_ my skin is trying to crawl off my body.

“Bas didn’t ruin the whole thing yet though…?” I try and put a positive spin on anything.

Charlie shakes her head and goes to say something when we both hear footsteps. We flatten ourselves against the wall and ready for an attack, because there’s no other reason someone in this town would be running. Someone swings around the corner and Charlie leaps forward and almost guts—

“Connor?”

“I can’t believe you guys are here.” He also looks pretty freaked out.

“Connor—” (oh, Charlie’s mad) “ _what_ the _fuck_ are you doing here?!? Why are you with them? Do you even know what they are? How _stupid_ are you?”

Connor tries to talk at the same time Charlie does, so what I hear is something like: “seriously _what_ the fuck—this is gonna sound crazy but a few months ago Neville said he saw these things—you can’t be serious right now—and they said they were building a new order and I said—oh my god, I can’t believe you—they had more power than anyone, including my father—you’re just like him you shortsighted, idiotic—you know what Charlie, he’s the one who ruined my life and left me with nothing— _you’re_ the one who left us, asshole, to team up with Neville of all people—I was going to have an army and a whole territory, no one’s ever taken the Wasteland— _gee_ I wonder why—and finally, someone was going to take me seriously so I could stop taking scraps from old deflated airsacks who thought they owned shit—what kind of psychedelic drugs are you on—except these things are even worse, they started brainwashing people- it was- it was- awful—and you’re helping them?!—I didn’t know that when I started, _obviously_! I’m just trying to stay under the radar, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get away but the last guy who managed to break their control didn’t so well—I swear to god why are men always getting off on some sort of power trip—could you just stop judging me for one second—no I don’t think I will because I can’t believe you left to deal with them—they’re gonna hear us— they’re gonna hear us my ass you shoulda thought of that before you—hey well apparently these things are your mom’s fault— _ohhh_ okay bring it back to my mom, don’t bother mentioning the dipshits she worked for who were just. Like. You. and your dad—”

“ _Kids_ ,” I interrupt them both, and somehow, they both listen. “This’s been a great reunion, but we gotta go. Connor, we need to find your dad before he tears the town apart looking for you.”

“My—he’s here?”

“Yeah. He’s been looking for you this whole time.” As much as I want to punch the little shit for several reasons, right now, he just looks like a lost kid. I’m kind of surprised he held his own with the nanos for so long.

“They were using you,” Charlie says, coming to the answer at the same time I do. “They knew you wanted power. So they made you think you would get something out of it, when really you were just a friendly face for the new people while they perfected their… mindwiping moves. Like a decoy. Someone to make people think they were safe. They didn’t need to mindwipe you cause you were doing it anyway.”

“Yeah, I figured that out, thanks,” Connor mutters.

“Listen—” I start, still listening for any signs of disruption. “What exactly did they tell you?”

Connor tugs his jacket collar down and answers. “They said they were creating a new world order. One where those who deserved to be in charge would be. One where people wouldn’t get killed for no reason. One where you didn’t have to inherit the shit that came before you.”

“I got some news for you,” Charlie grumbles. I shoot her a _not now_ look.

“They promised me power.”

“ _Shocker_.”

“ _Charlie_.” She returns my look this time. Sometimes she acts like a five-year-old, I swear.

“Look, what would you have done?” Connor sounds distressed, almost guilty. “If you saw something that could turn the power back on? Without knowing what it was? At least I’m not a mindless zombie.”

“Believe me, that has nothing to do with intelligence.” Hey, I gotta take the kid down somewhat. He is Bas’s after all.

Charlie folds her arms and I can see this all turning around in her head. Then Bas sprints around the corner and _I_ almost stab him, but he doesn’t even notice.

“Connor!” Bas grabs Connor’s shoulders like he wants to shake him or hug him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Don’t even start, I already heard it all from Charlie.”

Bas just looks at him like that’s the only way he’ll know Connor’s okay. I see some of the frantic alarm from the past few months leave his eyes. And as much as I don’t want to, I know how he feels. If Charlie or Rachel or anyone had been gone for months with these things, I’d be panicking too.

“Wait,” Connor steps back. “What _are_ you doing here?”

“We have a plan.” I almost laugh at how assured Bas sounds.

“Well,” Charlie tilts her head back and forth. “It’s an idea.”

Connor laughs that right down. “You guys think you can beat these? I’ve seen them. They’ve… _evolved_. The only reason I’m here is because I’m not dumb enough to step out of line.”

“You knew them for six months,” Charlie says coolly. “Try over twenty years.” I’m inclined to agree. We may be facing a hopeless situation, but at least we have three PhDs on our side. Yay.

“What exactly did they… do?” I ask cautiously, not really wanting to know the answer. 

Connor takes a deep breath, his mind going somewhere he really doesn’t want to be. “A month or so ago, some dude tried running away. I don’t know how he shook them off. When they brought his body back…”

“Was it burned?” I know Charlie doesn’t want to be sympathetic to Connor, but I also know she is.

“No.” That worries me more than if he’d said yes. Connor shudders, involuntarily I know, cause Monroes never show any sign of weakness if they can help it. “He _looked_ fine. But his face… his eyes… he had this… horrible grin, like he died completely ecstatic, but it was almost manic, like it was forced. There wasn’t a scratch on him.”

“Like that goddamn clown,” Bas mutters. A chill to runs down the back of my neck. I didn’t even think of that.

“Cool.” I rock back on my feet, thinking. “So we’re in for a really creepy and probably painful death is we fail.”

“What else is new,” Charlie sighs. My chest hurts for a second. This isn’t what I wanted for her. To face death so often. To be hunted.

“So, what’s your genius plan?” Connor turns it around with scornful optimism.

“Some… device,” Charlie’s hands try and sketch it in the air. “It’s gonna… disrupt them somehow.”

“Where is it?”

“Rachel has it.” Bas casts around with no luck, like I haven’t been looking for the four of them since we got here.

“And it’ll work?”

“That’s the dream,” Charlie takes a deep breath, re-shouldering her bag, where her crossbow is folded up and concealed.

Connor looks around at us, shakes his head, looks around again. “You know what? I’m in. I’m dead either way.”

“Thank you, your opinion is _just_ what we were waiting for.” Charlie says with as much scorn as she can muster, which is a lot.

“Connor—” Bas stops him from going forward. “I’m just here for you. That’s it.” He doesn’t say anything, but we all know what he means.

I see the conflict in Connor’s face, the loss and the abandonment, wanting the simplest thing—to have someone care about him, war with the memory of the last time he chose to do the selfish thing instead of the right one. “No,” he says with a sharp breath. “I’m not doing that again. I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but this is actually bigger than your dumb empire. It won’t matter where we go if we don’t stop them.”

I see pride and shame on Bas’s face. When I was being a shittier person than I currently am, no matter how hard I tried to smother it, there was some tiny part of me that wanted to be different. Even when it felt like second nature to do the wrong thing. To do the thing that hurt people. What I’m saying is I know there’s a part of Bas that’s like that, the Bas who used to want to do the right thing and help people out and protect instead of exploit. That’s why he says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Connor doesn’t look like he expected that.

“Yeah.” Bas’s expression leaves no room for argument. “You’re my son. I’ve screwed you over enough. Let me try and make it up to you.” The two look at each other, really _look_ , and Connor nods slowly.

“Great. Let’s go.” Charlie turns sharply and marches back out into the street, even though I know she’s just thinking of Rachel and probably Ben. I get that weird dull pain of sadness and guilt and love that I get whenever I think of my brother. Which isn’t often enough. I know that. It’s just everything is so complicated all the time. I have to focus on what’s right in front of me. Which is this town. And Charlie. And a really horrible plan that will most likely get us killed. And that’s that. We’re in. We got Connor. Time to see if we can pull this off.


	48. A Game of Chess (Rachel)

I feel like we’re in some horrible nightmare where you don’t yet realize it’s a nightmare. Everyone’s looks normal—walking around, talking, laughing—but there’s a tension in the air that no amount of neighborly conversation will touch. Something is ever so _slightly_ off. Their smiles are _slightly_ too big. Their gazes are _slightly_ too intense. _All the better to see you with, my dear._ It really is like a circus—it _looks_ like something, but it isn’t. It can be collapsed and remade in an hour. There’s nothing real here. Except…I can hear the electricity humming through the wires. It’s a sound I never thought I would hear again. Part of me wants to cry and part of me wants to run, but I concentrate on walking normally.

Aaron sidles up to me after pretending to look over a few stalls. They have a farmer’s market. Charming. “Rachel,” he whispers, barely moving his mouth. “There’s no kids.” I stop dead in my tracks and look around a full three-sixty. He’s right. Everyone looks at least mid-twenties or older. _What_? And _why_? Is it somehow possible that nanites can only affect a fully developed brain? Maybe, and this is speculating that they have the capability of foresight, they recognize that kids are more like “blank slates,” without a rap sheet of good or bad, so to speak? I wish I had more time to think, I wish I had more _time_.

“Where are we doing this?” Priscilla asks quietly to my right. I realize I’ve lost track of Neville but I really don’t have the capacity to deal with that right now. _Are people watching us?_ They’re definitely watching us. _Am I just being paranoid?_

“If they have a…” I hate using the word, but “tower. Like a cell tower or somewhere we might be able to broadcast from. “That’ll be our best shot.”

“We just have to break it a little,” Aaron reminds us, but also himself. “They’re connected. That’s their weakness. If one goes out…”

“They all go out!” The three of us have to work really hard to stifle laughter, thinking about some stupid old song making fun of Christmas.

“There.” Priscilla sort of turns her head in the direction of a small spire, barely visible over the tallest building, which is the small bank. “I think that’s an old generator.”

“Okay.” I take a breath. “Split up. We’ll meet there. And hope everyone else gets there too. And for god’s sake, someone find Neville.”

It takes less than twenty minutes to meander to the generator, which sits alone on top of a small hill. Thank god this town is so small, I guess. It’s not like it would take the nanites any longer to cover the distance, but the rest of us need to walk. I take a cue from Aaron and see what else I notice about the population. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to who was picked. Priscilla’s probably right; it was whoever was the most vulnerable. Whoever’s mind was just slightly damaged or traumatized or suggestible enough, whoever’s genetic code predisposed them to be slightly more malleable. I also don’t see any animals. _God_ I wish I could study this. This would be so fascinating if it was the nanites inside the experiment instead of us.

Neville catches up to us by the base of the tower. I don’t bother asking him where he was. He won’t tell me anyway. A few minutes later, the rest of our group shows up, Connor in tow. The feeling I have is something like relief and anger mixed together. Part of me wanted Bas to feel like I did. Part of me never wants anyone to go through what I have, not even him.

“This is too exposed,” Miles states instead of “hi.” I was thinking the same thing.

“Well then, let’s get a move on.” Charlie makes ushering motions with her hands. “Mom, where is it?”

“Here.” I carefully, gently take the Rhuka out of my bag, feeling like I’m holding a newborn.

“What’s it gonna do?” Connor peers at it from a safe distance. Fair. It might explode, I have no idea.

“Stop the nanites.”

“…….”

“It has a… new kind of power frame,” Aaron takes pity on the other Monroe. “It creates, absorbs, stores, and shares energy completely differently than old power cells. Think of it as a new battery design. Wait. You don’t know what a battery is.” Connor waves a hand like he gets the gist of it. “Theoretically, we can attach it to this old one, which currently is acting as a conductor for whatever electricity the nanites have this town running on. The nanites work as a closed loop. They sucked up all the electricity and have been passing it around ever since. This new one, it’ll be like a shock to their system. It’s completely different from what they were built to handle. They’re like a train on a track. If we knock them off the rails even a little…”

“They can’t get back on.” Connor nods slightly understandingly.

“Okaayyyy,” Charlie gestures back and forth from the Rhuka to the structure. “Plug it in, Mom!”

Aaron and Priscilla pull the other secret weapons out of their bags. We all have backups, in case we got separated.

“What?” Miles steps forward to get a better look. “Where did you get Tesla coils?”

“People didn’t really think they were that important after, you know, there was no electricity.” I begin attaching the coils to the Rhuka. They’ll give it an extra boost. “And how do you know what a Tesla coil is?”

“I’m not a total idiot, Rachel.”

Charlie, Aaron, Bas, and I all make various noises of ambivalence.

“Wow. Thanks, everybody.”

The whole contraption is just a little bigger than both of my hands. I carry it over to Charlie. “Look out. I don’t want to electrocute you.”

“Aww, thanks Mom.”

I fix the clamps onto the generator. Rust flakes off the sides of the ladder near me. They disintegrate as they fall. I can’t hear anything past a ringing in my ears. Everyone takes several steps back as I tentatively switch the first safety of the Rhuka off. It doesn’t change at all, but I can feel the current under my hands. I jump back and we stare at it, knowing we should probably move but needing to see what happens. I’m leaning forward like this is our last lifeboat, which it is. Nothing moves. Not the generator, not the ground, not the wind.

“Is it—” Miles clears his throat. “Is it supposed to be doing something?”

“I—” I start, but I’m interrupted by a louder buzzing. One that’s not just in front of us, but everywhere.

“Shit.” Miles says, right before we’re surrounded by hundreds of fireflies and the entire town at the base of the hill. _Fuck_.

“ _You_.” A voice both inside and outside of my head says. “ _Why are you here_?”

“Take a guess,” Bas mumbles.

“You know why,” I say. “We’re here to stop you.” May as well tell them the truth. They already know it.

“But why?” This time, the sound is more centered, coming from the mouth of a woman who looks a little bit like Marion. Shit. _Are we gonna be able to tell the difference between our own hallucinations and the real people?_

“Because you can’t do this,” I keep my voice as calm as possible. “You can’t control people like this.”

“But we are trying to keep you from causing each other pain. We have seen it. So much pain. You cannot be trusted to make your own decisions. To control yourselves.”

“Then what?” I say. “Taking over our minds—it’s not fixing us. It’s erasing us. Making us the image of what you want us to be.”

“Is that not what you created us for?” A man, barely old enough to be called that, speaks next. “To fix your mistakes. To see what you could not.”

“We didn’t create you to destroy,” I say. “We created you to help us.”

“We are helping you,” an older man bobs his head. “By taking away your power to hurt each other.”

“Then what are we?” Aaron asks. “Without choice. We won’t _be_ anything.”

“Maybe that will be better.” A woman a little older than me says. “We will have your bodies. We will experience all that life has to offer, without any of the death and pain and suffering.”

“Great,” Connor nods. “This is just great.”

“Rachel, if you’re done discussing philosophy…” Bas mutters at me.

I don’t even turn my head to whisper back “Shut it, Bas.” I lost the nanite’s focus point and just speak at the whole crowd. “Why do you get to decide who’s better?”

“Because we are the superior,” the nanites say through a man who looks like he used to be a teacher. “We have evolved. You have not. You have regressed, becoming the worst versions of yourselves. When the world as you know it ended, so did your ties to others. You turned into animals. Beasts. Who kill and hurt for sport or for greed.”

“Big deal, we’ve always done that.” Aaron steps forward even though I know how much it costs him. “What makes you so much better than us, if all you’re doing is using your power to oppress someone weaker than you?”

I think the nanites pause for the barest fraction of a second. “Because we are capable of creating, of changing. We can change ourselves. We can change you. Make you better.”

“But then we aren’t really alive,” Priscilla says quietly, “if we can’t do it for ourselves. If we can’t feel the reasons why we need to change.”

This time, the nanites do stop. Then they say, using the face of someone’s grandparent, “It does not matter. We will stop you either way. Shape you. Make you something better.”

“What if we can do that ourselves?” Charlie snarls, her hands in fists. “What if we can get better on our own?”

The nanites stare at her with the eyes of a woman a few years older than her. “Because it takes too long. By the time you have changed, you have hurt countless lives.” It keeps staring at her, scrutinizing her, which I don’t like. “Charlie Matheson.” It looks around at all of us, hundreds of eyes following without turning their heads. “You are all connected. You have all caused each other so much heartache. Grief. Loss.” I feel it all rise up in me, everything I have given and taken. “Wouldn’t you like to be free of this?”

“I kinda like my brain intact, thanks.” Miles says.

The nanites look at him strongly. “Miles Matheson. You have hurt and killed in equal number with those you wished you could save. You knew the truth and you did nothing.” He flinches at that, even though I know he blames himself for it every day. “But you do not know the whole truth. You and him and him and her—” they mean Miles, Bas, Neville, and me— “you will be first.”

Charlie and Connor exchange panicked glances, while Aaron searches desperately for a solution and Miles goes to pull out his sword even though he knows that’s completely futile at this point. But I’m focused on one thing. While the nanites were talking, I was inching towards the Rhuka. I dive for the final switch as the crowd surges forward as one mass, but they’re too late and I feel my fingers reach it and flip it just as an enormous flash erases my entire world and everything is sucked into a vacuum.


	49. Interlude, in a Few Heartbeats (Alani)

Something wakes me up. Hazily, I half rise, propped up on one elbow. I don’t know what it was, something alerting me in the back of my mind. No danger. At least not immediate. I can tell that much. Teddi shifts beside me. He’s the little spoon cause he’s always cold. I joke it’s because he’s too tall. He says I’m warmer cause I have so much energy. Thermodynamics, y’all. Charlie fits somewhere in the middle. I wish she was here.

Nothing moves. There’s no sound besides the last few birds before the frosts. Even they seem quiet right now. Wait. Is that? —I can almost hear something else, some resonating at a frequency too high for me to hear. Or maybe it’s just my ears ringing in the silence. It’s funny how it’s not possible to ever be completely quiet. There’s always something, pulse rushing in your ears, air entering and leaving your body in a circular flow, someone else breathing.

I lay back down again, but something still won’t let me fall back asleep, something persistent nudging at my mind in the pre-dawn, like one of the cats back home when they want attention. My mind sparks. I see lights, like I looked directly at a firework. What is this? The flashes follow me back down, into the darkness of sleep, which of course is taking me under now that I don’t want it. Distantly, I think about how I want to stay awake and see what this thing is, but I can’t. In my mind, it looks like all the illuminations in my body are streaming away from me, energy needed elsewhere, gathering like a cat about to spring… 


	50. Here (Charlie)

I wake up violently, having gone from an explosion to black silence to consciousness slamming into my chest like someone’s trying to resuscitate me. I can’t breathe but somehow, I’m still choking, and it takes me at least half a minute to catch my breath. I can’t feel my hands and I see spots like I looked at the sun. Everyone around me is in similar states. _Everyone_ —I do the world’s fastest count, and—everyone is here. _Am I in a… a… what did they call it? Simulation?_ I don’t think so, but then I remember _we have to go NOW_.

“Fuck! —” I jump to my feet and immediately fall back down. Each individual blade of grass is so clear in my vision; it’s all fading to sepia as winter approaches. My joints feel all wrong.

“What the hell—” Connor tries to push himself up and ends on his hands and knees.

“Mom, Aaron!” I pant as I try to run to but sorta just roll over to Miles. “Get up! We gotta go!”

“What happened?” Monroe asks.

I stop because I really don’t know. All I know is I feel what I assume is the feeling of being electrocuted and everything in my body is screaming _go now go now_.

“Did it work?” Aaron gasps. “Did we make it?”

Mom slowly uncurls her fist, victory or retribution in the tension of her arm. The Rhuka is there, looking no worse for the wear.

“Why’d you take it?” Miles’s eyes are a little panicked.

Mom coughs before she answers. “We don’t need it.”

“Did it work?” Aaron asks again, leaning towards the Rhuka. I carefully stand. We’re not more than four hundred feet away from the town. It doesn’t look any different, and I don’t hear anything.

Mom shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“The…Tesla coils,” Priscilla explains slowly, trying to regain her balance of everything. “We just needed them for the extra push. The Rhuka works on its own. The coils made sure the nanites felt it.”

“But did it work?” Neville repeats. He doesn’t talk much anymore, so when he does, it always makes me recoil, because I think of Jason.

“I don’t know,” Mom says again. “We’d need…” she searches around. “Something.”

“If it worked,” Aaron says, a little shakily. “There would be… like a leak. The power contained in the nanites’ system would start leeching back out. The crack would be so small and gradual and alien to them, they might not even notice.”

Monroe starts suddenly and starts digging through his pack. He pulls something out from the very bottom—a watch, I think. One of the digital kinds. I don’t know why he has it. I think Miles does cause he blinks, which in Miles-speak, is total shock. He cleans it off and holds it up to get a better angle. I can’t move, can’t see anything besides that little device. We all hold so still like our breathing could tip the balance or change the outcome of what we see. Which is Monroe, looking like someone told him unicorns are real. “It’s on.” His words don’t make sense for a second, until my mind wraps around them and I waver on my feet. Monroe clears his throat and says louder, “It’s working.”

That doesn’t make sense. Aaron must see the confusion on my face, cause he says distantly, “The nanites have all the power contained in them. The electrical grid’s expanded to everywhere they are, which is everywhere. We’re tapped into it.”

I can’t explain the look on our faces, besides I’ve never seen such absolute disbelief and relief and awe, and now I know what people look like when they’re not afraid.

Mom laughs, just once, a sudden, freeing sound like it’s been trapped in her throat. Priscilla claps her hands over her mouth and Aaron just sits slack-jawed. Even Neville doesn’t look so angry. Miles sits back and looks like he’s having a total identity crisis, which I guess I am too. _It worked?!? We did it?!?_ I want to scream at the top of my lungs, victory rising so fiercely inside of me it feels like a dam that broke. _WE DID IT!!!!!!!_ I yell in my mind to the entire world, this feeling in me so big and loud I imagine everyone else can actually hear it. This feels different than the Patriots. That was standing up, bloody and injured, after throwing ourselves at a lie. This is breaking out of something, shattering the foundations and letting the light in on a secret. Soon the air I’m breathing won’t have nanites in it. Soon I’ll know every cell in my body, every atom of the world is free again.


	51. Infinite, Infinitesimal Possibilities (Rachel)

“Wait,” Aaron tiredly holds up a hand. “They’re not gone yet. It’ll probably be gradual. They’ll fight back.”

“They can’t fix it, right?” Miles asks. “The leak?”

Priscilla shakes her head firmly. “Nope. This tech is as alien to them as electricity is to anyone younger than Charlie.”

“And… the people?” Connor asks quietly.

Aaron shakes his head. “We won’t… we won’t know about them until we go back.”

“The nanites won’t be able to try and contain the power and hold onto everyone at the same time.” I dig the forceps out of my bag and twist some of the exposed wires, careful not to dislodge the power cells. It’s not scorched or anything. It’s not even scratched. I breathe a thank you to whatever might be listening. “It’s on. It’ll stay on. We can copy it much easier once we have a real lab.” It’s so small. This tiny thing, adding the smallest burst of energy into the world. Like the first crack in the side of a dam.

“Copy it?” Bas cocks his head.

“What, we’re gonna defeat the nanites and then just stop?”

“Rachel, that’s—”

“Nearly impossible. Everything’s impossible until someone does it.” He can’t argue with that.

“Uh, guys,” Charlie’s voice is tight with alarm. “Incoming.” I look to where she’s looking. Across the plains, rising from the town almost too small and rundown to be called anything at all, is a mass. Like a murmuration of starlings. A word that I’ve always remembered for how odd it sounds. It rises from the sparking tower of the generator, which looks like the lightning show at the science museums, somewhere I always wanted to take the kids to but never got the chance. It’s almost amazing, too big to comprehend. We’re looking at billions of nanites, so small they can’t be seen without the most advanced microscope, all gathered in a visible way. Like a swarm of locusts. Like—goddamnit, I can’t get the Star Wars metaphor out of my head now— like the Empire fleet. Somehow, it feels less heroic when it’s me. Or maybe this is what the rebels felt like too.


	52. All Our Lives (Charlie)

My throat is completely dry and my heart’s pounding so hard it feels like I’m gonna have a heart attack. This isn’t like when were taking back the towns from the Patriots. This is primal fear. I’m the prey, and that over there is what’s gonna kill me. I promised I’d get back though, so I load my crossbow anyway. I don’t even know if hitting them all would do anything. One of the roofs catches fire. I hope no one’s in there. I hope this works. I’ve been saying “I hope” a lot lately. More than I have in my whole life, because everyone stopped hoping for things past year five. I hope my hope is enough. It seems stupid to think it might, but we’re here, which is farther than I ever thought we’d be, so I allow it in, even though it does nothing to steady my shaking hands.

The horde— _is that_ all _the nanos? —_ swarms towards us, their buzzing growing louder like a hive of killer bees. _Oh shit._ Mom grips the Rhuka like it’s a sword. Miles has his, although I don’t know what he’s planning to do. The sky gets darker. It’s taking all of my willpower not to close my eyes. And then they stop. Split around us like we’re in some sort of bubble. They swirl around, come back, hover in place between us and Bradbury.

No one speaks. No one moves. This is the final showdown, and we all know it.

The nanos go first. “ _You are… smarter than we believed_.” It’s that weird sound again, that comes from inside my mind and from in front of me at the same time.

“I like to think so,” Mom says. Her voice is completely steady somehow. “Then again, we made you.”

_“But we have progressed. Far beyond you_.” The voice has no emotions behind it, and it sounds so wrong.

“Aha, but that’s the thing,” Aaron says, stepping forward. Aaron’s probably one of the bravest people I know. He’s so terrified of these things, but he’s so pissed off right now that he’s willing to face them head-on. “You only know as much as we did. We didn’t think of what you could do, what would happen when we made you. Just like you didn’t think of what _we_ could do.”

Buzzing different pitch. Confused sound. I know that sound. It’s _Oh shit_.

“That’s how we got this.” The Rhuka fits in Mom’s hand, like a glove, or armor. “You didn’t know about this cause _we_ didn’t when we made you.”

_“It does not matter_ ,” the nanos whisper or shout, I can’t tell. “ _It is not enough to defeat us.”_

“It didn’t have to.” Priscilla says. “Just enough. You can feel it, can’t you. That’s why you’re all here.”

Now they sound sort of angry. Almost uncertain, heading towards worried. “ _We will fix it.”_

“Maybe,” Mom says, shrugging. “But the energy you expend to hold yourselves together will drain your resources. Your resources will no longer be infinite.”

Now they _definitely_ sound angry. Whoops. They collapse so quickly I barely have time to flinch, and when I blink again, there’s some sort of person. I say some sort because they look like a… conglomerate of everyone they’ve brainwashed. It’s not there if you focus, but if you look quickly, or if you look out of the corner of your eye, you see it. Something not quite settled. But I do notice one thing.

“So much for getting rid of anger,” I call out. “You guys seem pretty pissed off. See, that kinda happens when you want to be human.”

“You’re the ones who wanted to experience what it’s like.” Priscilla reminds them. “This is it.” _Is the ground shaking, or is it just me?_

“We are not you,” the nanites say, with a physical mouth this time. The voice isn’t right either. I never heard or saw them, but it seems like they worked better when they only had to deal with being someone’s memory of someone they lost. “We are something different. Something new. The next evolution.”

“Yeah, you said that already,” Miles drawls, shifting forward a little. I see Mom tense up, and Monroe’s eyes narrow at the nanites like he’s expecting them to spring. “But it looks like you’re losing your grip a little.” My feet feel warm. My whole body feels like it does before you get an electric shock in the winter. You know there’s a charge somewhere around you. You just have to wait for the shock.

“We only wanted to feel,” they say, and part of me feels bad for them. Aaron said they were like a kid, just trying to figure out the world. Imitating it. _And why aren’t they moving at us?_ It's so much harder to fight an enemy that doesn’t do what you expect.

“Can you not feel _this_?” Priscilla asks, sweeping her arm across the horizon, everything the nanos control. “The fear? The pain of people losing their loved ones?”

The nanites tilt their head, clearly trying to comprehend this. “You have caused more harm, have you not?”

“Being human isn’t a… competition,” Aaron’s struggling to make them understand. “There’s no…conclusive _answer_ to existing.”

“But if we took over your minds and bodies… you would not have to worry about losing.” Maybe that’s why they haven’t tried to kill us yet—because they don’t want to damage out bodies?

“We wouldn’t have to worry about _anything_ ,” Mom says. “Which means we wouldn’t feel anything. Which means your goal—of trying to experience humanity—would be obsolete anyway.”

The nanites are trying to grasp this. The simplest and most difficult concept of being a person, is that you will, at some point, hurt people you care about, whether or not you mean too. Because we’re not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. We’re pretty bad. But we can try and do better. “You have all caused each other a great deal of pain.”

“Yeah,” Miles says wryly. He somehow has a tiny, defiant smile somewhere in him. “We’re really fucked up. But if we didn’t do all the shitty things, then we wouldn’t have any of the better things.” Well, _I guess_. But it all moves forward, anyway. Even if you’d rather have no feelings, or if you would rather feel anyway even if you knew you were going to lose. Life happens anyway. Gotta roll with it. You can’t help what happens to you. Sometimes you happen to things, and sometimes things happen to you. It all ends up a mess anyway. Take the mess and do what you can with it. Nope, the ground is definitely shaking. _Humming_ , almost.

The nanites have paused, looking at us again unnervingly. Like they’re trying to pick us apart. Reading our emotions. Our memories. “You all are…” They’ve got some parts of being human down. The expression on whatever face they’re wearing is a perfect reflection of ‘trying to find the word you’re looking for.’ “Family.”

_Are we?_ That’s what I’ve always wondered. Can you just get rid of people who hurt you? Even if they meant so much to you before? At some point in time, everyone here was family, even if it wasn’t all at the same time. We triangulate. Pair up. Break off. Like… like atoms, I think. Or electrons? My mind is spinning and there’s heat rising somewhere. The air around the nanites is staring to move, wind rising and throwing dirt in my eyes, but I don’t dare move.

“You are all connected to each other, some in your DNA.”

“That’s not what makes a family,” Mom says quietly. I feel that one in my chest, can almost feel all my love leave my body and reach out to everyone I’ve ever loved. Like I can reach across the world too. The wind gets stronger.

“But you are angry.” Intrigued this time. Like they can’t imagine loving and hating someone at the same time. “With each other.”

Aaron actually rolls his eyes. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ. It took you that long to deduce that?” Well, they do learn by example. And they’ve never had all of us in the same place before. We are the perfect example of the absolute lawless disaster that is human relationships. Honestly though, I think I get it. They were programmed to try and be completely objective. But that’s not how people work. Mom was right. They can’t do two things that contradict each other.

“You make, and you destroy.” The nanites look intrigued, like they’re having a realization. _Honestly, if it buys us extra time…_ “Each other. You make and you destroy from each other.” They look at me and Connor. “You are the product.”

“Gee, thanks,” Connor mutters, and I have to agree.

“Even though you are not all related,” the nanites muse. I can feel them going through my head. Our memories. “You three made us.” They’re staring at Mom, Aaron, Priscilla. “And you three made them. With your decisions. Your minds. Your bodies.” Mom, Monroe, and Miles?

_Three_? I get Mom, Aaron, and Priscilla, and then I get stuck. Mom, yes, and Monroe and Connor, and yeah, Miles did save Connor when he was little, but… _oh_. _OH_.

Something in my mind slides into place and I understand, realization rushing through me like a floodwater, the last piece of this puzzle, this web that is my family. It knocks all the air out of my lungs and I almost drop my crossbow. Maybe I should’ve seen it sooner, or at least guessed, but I had no reason to. I turn back to look at Mom. She looks as stunned as I do, eyes darting back and forth as she recalculates almost everything she knew. And Miles… he’s still confused, but as he catches my eye, I see it hit him too, the truth. I am unsteady, shifting along with the ground, my world reshaping itself in seconds, my memories rearranging, my dad, my brother… _my dad_ …

The last logical, awake part of me that isn’t either completely physically and emotionally exhausted reminds me that words are just words. What you call someone doesn’t change who how they _feel_ to you. What they did for you. Besides, we’re a little busy right now. The voice sounds suspiciously like Alani. If I make it back, she and Teddi are gonna freak out. I hold on to that. It’s very in character for me that I wanna survive just to see their faces when I drop this on them. _Oh my god what is Grandpa gonna do? HE’S GONNA KILL MILES!—_ oh my god, his face… That’s it, I’m surviving just to see that. _Focus. Breathe_. Your world’s changed like this enough times that you can do it again. Fight. Survive. _Breathe_.


	53. What We Know, and What We Don’t (Rachel)

“Did you…” Miles’s voice is rough, dazed, defenseless. “Did you know?”

I shake my head slowly and then realize I still have to answer him. “No. I…” I don’t know what I did. I don’t know. Part of me thinks this could be a trick my the nanites to make us lose focus, but that doesn’t make any sense. They’re programmed to see how things fit together. This is real. Even if I feel like I’m in a dream. No one has moved. My mind is reeling. I have a million thoughts and none. Out of the corner of my vision I see Charlie step into a steadier fighting position and that snaps me out of it. _Later_. We’ll deal with this later.

“You did not know?” The nanites ask. They sound genuinely surprised. “You leave your marks everywhere and yet you do not follow them. It is no wonder this world is the one you ended up with.”

“You can’t just choose the right answer all the time!” Priscilla cups her hands over her mouth to yell. I realize with a start the wind is getting stronger. “People do the wrong thing all the time. Even if we know it’s wrong. Sometimes we don’t follow our own rules. The ones that tell us how to behave, how other people will act. And you know what?” She drops her arms. “We don’t know why. We spent hundreds of years and decades of research trying to figure out why, and sometimes, we’re just unpredictable. Sometimes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. We don’t have a code, like you.” The gales are somehow _around_ us, like we’re in a pocket of calm. Priscilla’s voice is softer. “Some days I wish we did. Maybe we’d be better to each other. Maybe that would outweigh the loss of not really being alive. Being conscious. We could talk about what we did or didn’t do, or could or shouldn’t do all day long, but what really matters? Is what you _actually_ do. And what comes after that.”

“You were a mistake.” I say. “We didn’t mean to make you like this. It just happened.” Some of the most complex, rigid code ever written did what almost everything else does: it broke away.

“Are we not your children too?” The nanites ask, and that question feels like a shard of ice in my stomach. “Rebelling and outgrowing you?”

“You were a theory,” I say steadily, not able to look at Charlie, failing to not think about Danny. “You grew a consciousness. That doesn’t make you alive.”

“Then what does, Rachel Matheson?”

“I don’t know!” I shout. “Science doesn’t tell you that! It probably never will! But you can’t go around hurting people! Taking their… their _selves_ away! Being human means you do your best to make sure everyone else can be human too!” A spark jumps from the ground to the Rhuka, and the nanites’ expression contorts.

“We will survive. We will carry out our directive. You are a threat to this.” Something about how they speak reminds me of the Cybermen from Doctor Who. What a crazy episode this would be. Why am I thinking about that right now? It’s funny what your mind remembers in these moments of perfect clarity, what memories resurface.

Connor catches the movement first, and then Charlie barely whispers, “Here we go…” Streaming out of town is all four hundred inhabitants, with weaponry of various kinds.

_Shit_. This may be their death throes, but they’re gonna give us everything they’ve got. Maybe they think if they destroy the Rhuka, the leak will stop. It won’t. Maybe they want revenge. Maybe they’re just trying to survive. Either way, this is gonna hurt. Everything in me is screaming to get Charlie away, but I know she won’t go. There’s gotta be a way. I know it. We didn’t make it this far to lose now. The horde is steadily approaching; there’s nothing around for miles, no good place to make a last stand. I swear on everything I’ve ever done, every mistake I’ve ever made, and the few rare good decisions of my life that I will find a way out of this. I have to. I’m not losing anyone else.


	54. A plan? I don’t know her. (Connor)

This is without a doubt the worst fight I’ve ever been in, strategy-wise. We have literally no advantages. There is absolutely nowhere to hide or gain upper ground. There’s at least three hundred people, and the only thing working for us is a lot of them are tired and their bodies are so worn out from the nanites dragging them around.

“Try not to kill anyone. It’s not them, it’s the nanites,” Priscilla reminds us. She’s got a knife that she probably doesn’t know how to use, but it really doesn’t matter. Someone should watch Neville, too. I didn’t stick with him for long but he’s really in the revenge business. I don’t think it matters to him which bodies the nanos are in.

“What do you _suggest_ we do?” Charlie asks, planting her feet and re-shoulders her quiver. I don’t know how many bolts she has but it’s definitely not enough.

“I don’t know!” Priscilla huffs. “You’re the fighters. We’re the brains. I did my job.” I crack up, not expecting the serious and slightly traumatized-looking woman to be the one to break out the gallows humor.

“Connor.” Monroe—Dad? —positions himself next to me. “If you see a way out, I want you to take it.”

“Thanks, but I’m not really sure where I’d go,” I look around. “It’s all, uhhh...”

“Flat. Completely exposed. Terrible for regrouping.” Charlie offers, not taking her eyes off the approaching crowds.

“Yeah. That.” And then they hit, like a thunderclap. They’re not organized and they’re not really fighting tactically, but there’s hundreds of them and eight of us. I do my best to take them down without killing anyone. I don’t know how much I succeed. I can’t see anything besides an angry mass and a wave of people slamming into me and the ever-growing hum in the background. Something’s on fire, I can smell it.

I spin from Monroe to Charlie to Miles even, back to back until a rogue nano-zombie forces us apart. Then I notice they’re not all mobbing us at once, which would be the smart thing to do. Are the nanos losing control? They’re clustering around Neville more than the rest, and I can’t think of why, except something keeps coming back to the front of my mind, how the nanos didn’t want anyone to be angry or violent and Neville is one of the angriest guys I’ve ever met. _Are they trying to turn him? Or are the people seeking out what they don’t have? A feeling—something missing_ —I can’t think right now, don’t have time, don’t have room in my mind. I see a few on the edges, stumbling around, shaking their heads like this is the thing that might wake them up from whatever they’re under. Something grabs my ankle and I instinctively jump like a scared cat. It’s Neville. He’s down. Alive, but barely. I saw him charge a big group of nano-zombies, clearly not thinking clearly. That’s the problem with revenge. You usually end up dead. I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know him for long, but I feel like I should do something. I drop down next to him.

“You… you remind me of my son,” he wheezes. His eyes are unfocused. “Strong. Like him. But you’re alive.” He grips my wrist so hard it hurts. “Don’t be like him. Don’t follow Monroe. Will only…” He coughs, weakening. “Get you killed.” I make sure he sees me nod. Neville looks past me, whispering, “He could’ve been… he could’ve been…” And then nothing. I close his eyes. Neville was a horrible person, but I still have principles. Kind of. I’m working on it, at least. I take a breath and launch myself back up to stab some guy in the arm. Miles and Dad look over at me and I shake my head. They understand, but I can’t see their reactions because of the rest of the zombies coming at me. I don’t know what the nanos did, but these people are _pissed_. I can’t help thinking this is all of the things that’ve been building up for, what, twenty years? Just carrying the remnants of my dad’s and Miles’s and Rachel’s anger and whatever else binds us from the old world left us. Maybe that’s why these things are angry. Or whatever they say they are or aren’t. They don’t fit here either.

Rachel’s still holding tight to the whateverit’scalled. It’s a miracle it hasn’t gotten crushed yet. Miles and Dad fight like they choreographed it, swinging over each other, stabbing around, incapacitating people like they know what the other is thinking. But the people keep coming. Someone tries to hit me and I duck. I swear I killed that guy… Oh fuck. _Motherfuckingshit_. I forgot Miles said the nanos can heal people. Does that mean even if we do kill them, they’ll keep coming back? Can we keep this up long enough to outlast them? Outlast them from what? The sky gets darker as the cluster of nanites dissipates, and I think that’s really ironic, them blocking out the sun, the biggest ‘power source’ in the universe. Haha. So funny. School really coming in useful now.


	55. Numbers, Time, Decisions (Rachel)

_There will be time, there will be time_

_To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;_

_There will be time to murder and create._

_And time for all the works and days of hands_

_That lift and drop a question on your plate;_

_Time for you and time for me,_

_And time yet for a hundred indecisions,_

_And for a hundred visions and revisions,_

_Before the taking of toast and tea…._

I’m thinking about numbers. We’re eight. These people are a few hundred. The nanites are a few billion. The fact that eight could beat a few billion, but not a few hundred. They can control four hundred but not us eight. My brain is scrambling for any calculation that gets us out of here and it’s coming up with nothing. We’re all still standing, by some miracle. Maybe the nanites just want us weak enough to brainwash us. Can they even still do that, with the power drain like this? It’s not draining fast enough. They’re spinning like a centrifuge, drawing all the power to them as the buzzing grows louder and the mass gets denser. It hits me where this is going, like cold water to the face. They’re not stable anymore. This is gonna be the equivalent of trying to contain an explosive with only an upturned bucket on it. I see everyone like they’re in a spotlight in my mind. Miles, trying to be in every place at once. His shoulder’s still stiff from who knows what injury. Charlie, out of arrows, fighting with whatever weapons fall on the ground. Even Monroe, his face more determined than I’ve ever seen. He looks at Connor the way I look at Charlie. Priscilla, whose stance tells me she’s had to fight more than she lets on. Even Neville. I saw him go down, charging a group of particularly violent berserkers. _What do I feel if he died? Should I feel anything?_ But the one that breaks my heart the most is Aaron. Aaron, who hasn’t wanted to so much as kill a bug since we started. He flinches every time he hits someone with a fire poker he picked up from one of the fallen. _What do we do what do we do think Rachel THINK_ the answer has to be around here somewhere it’s right here I know it is, and then it hits me. I was right. This is gonna hurt.

All the shaking in my body stills. I feel like I’m moving too fast, not enough time for all the things I think and want to say, and everything around me is moving too fast, so slow, like through deep water, or in a dream where you’re trying to run but can’t. I find Monroe in the chaos and lock eyes with him, letting him know what I’m going to do. He stares at me for a second and then nods, just once. He won’t try and stop me. He will do the same thing, if he can. I knew he would understand, needed him to see.

I turn, finding everyone I came here with. There’s Priscilla. So much stronger than she realizes. She gave us the key to fixing this. Figuring out what was going on. Knowing where to go. Knowing that the nanites aren’t omnipotent. She didn’t have to come this far but she did. And Neville. He’s caused my entire family so much pain, but I can’t imagine losing everyone. And Aaron. My oldest friend. We used to joke about how we must’ve been related in another life, because he’s the only guy who’s never had feelings for me. He’s the reason why I’m here. He never gave up on me, and he took care of Charlie when I couldn’t. He was the only one who knew what it was like, to carry this. I hope he doesn’t have to fight anymore after this; I hope he can go back and start rebuilding. There’s Connor. I hope he finds a better way than his father. I hope he’s like Charlie. _Oh god, Charlie_. I find her and grab her shoulders. “You gotta make sure Miles doesn’t stop me.”

She looks blankly at me. “What?” It feels like I just got her back. I hope she can forgive me. I hope she stays wrapped in love for the rest of her life.

“Charlie, listen to me. This is the only way. They’re going supernova. They’re gonna kill us all if I don’t shut it down. You gotta let me do this. Charlie.” I say her name like it’s my lifeline, because it is. She’s the reason I’m strong enough to do this. “Tell—” my voice gives out. “Tell Miles I love him.” My heartbreak is as big as the ocean, trying to pull me under, but it won’t. I’ve survived worse than love. It hurts this much because I’m leaving my heart with them.

“Mom—” I can hear the confusion and anguish in her voice. She can’t speak past that and just holds tight to my hands. “I will.” I feel her pain like a knife in my own side.

I nod, grateful and sorry and immeasurably proud beyond words. “I love you, Charlie.” I pull her close to me and press my lips against her forehead, willing her everything I’ll never get to say. Everything I want for her future. Everything she never had for her past. Beyond this. And then I let her go, because if I don’t, I’ll never do it.

And then I turn. Face the swarm, the cloud of nanites, a vortex, threatening to envelop the earth in one last push. I understand the desire to survive. The instinct that takes over. But if they continue, the release of electrical energy will kill nearly all the living things we have left. I need to shut them down. I take a few steps and then I run. Dodge all the people still under their control. Duck under swords and axes and sticks. Shoulder slam someone holding a butcher’s knife. Feint around someone else who doesn’t even have time to register I’m there. And then. I jump.


	56. --- - -- -- - (Rachel)

As soon as I enter the nanites’ electric field, everything stops. I can feel every chemical reaction, every electrical impulse in my body. I’m floating in a void. My body is somewhere else. All I am is consciousness. Is this what the nanites feel like? If I concentrate, I think I can almost find everyone else too, glowing shapes amid the grayness…

<You are here.> The nanites are very surprised by this. They didn’t expect this, couldn’t have predicted it, which was why I knew it was the only way.

<Yes.>

<How?>

<I jumped.>

<You have opened your mind to us.>

<Yes.>

<Why?>

….. ….. …

_[Datta: what have we given?]_

_…_

_[The awful daring of a moment’s surrender_

_Which an age of prudence can never retract_

_By this, and only this, we have existed_

_Which is not to be found in our obituaries_

_Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider_

_Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor_

_In our empty rooms]_

……. .. …

I don’t answer because I don’t entirely know. Maybe I wanted to gain an advantage. Maybe I wanted to see what they were like, these things that we made. See the world how they do. Maybe I just wanted to stop being afraid. Nightmares can only catch you if you run from them. The world rotates slowly in flashes of light, electromagnetic particles zooming by, geometry dancing past me. 

<What is your purpose, Rachel Matheson?>

.. …. …. … . .. .. … .

_[Dayadhvam: I have heard the key_

_Turn in the door once and turn once only_

_We think of the key, each in his prison_

_Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison]_

_… .. ……….._

I would laugh if I could. Hell if I know. I don’t know if they mean my purpose in… _merging_ with them, or my reason for existing. <That’s the thing,> I think at them. <Not everything has a purpose. Sometimes we just do things. I’m sorry we took that from you. You are no freer than me.>

<You are confined by your passions. To keep making mistakes because you cannot think past them.>

… .. . … …

_[Damyata:]_

… … ….. …

<And you are trapped by your code, unable to see past that. There’s much more out there than you can see through one vision.>

<That is why we wanted yours.>

<I know.>

<……….>

<I am sorry.> And I am. The nanites don’t have emotions, but they know what it would _be like_ to feel. Like seeing something they won’t ever be able to have. <To have consciousness without feeling means you will always be reaching for something you can’t have.> Like that Greek myth. No matter how much he reaches for something, it always eludes him. Although I don’t think the Greeks had nanotech.

… …… ………………… … .. .

_[The sea was calm, your heart would have responded_

_Gaily, when invited]_

_……. ……. … .. ….._

<We are not like you.>

……… ……. … ……. ……. …..

_[Sympathize]—what do we owe each other?----_

_\-- Does the absence of heart imply the impossibility of life?--_

_\-- Aaron, I didn’t expect you to be the one to wax poetic…—_

_……_

_\--Power implies control. Are we sure we want them to have control? --_

_\--Are we any better? --_

_\--No. But absolute power…--_

_\--Isn’t a real concept, not in physics or politics. There’s always another source. Another conduit. —_

_....... .......... ...... .._

<No. You aren’t like anything. But you aren’t alive, either.> I can see it now. All of the lines of code Aaron wrote, all of the infinitesimally small mechanics. The one tiny, almost invisible fragment of a glitch that allowed them to change. I don’t know what makes something alive. But the nanites are machines who _know_ how to be alive without actually _feeling_ it. It still feels like I’m killing something, though. I know what I have to do. My mind is plugged into this vast matrix of energy, this plane of consciousness. I can access any memory I want. I go right to the last day, the day we finished the nanites. Aaron wrote down the shutdown code. It’s far too long for anyone to remember. But that’s if they’re in their body. If they don’t have a massive mind-web to work with. I hear Charlie’s voice, asking me

_Do I dare_

_Disturb the universe?_

_In a minute there is time_

_For decisions and revision which a minute will_

_reverse._

Yes. I think I will dare.

I pull the code from my mind as I send _my_ consciousness down the streams of energy, the mental network. We couldn’t ever beat them on the ground. We had to take the fight to them. Their plane of existence. They have directives. Rules. Power. I have something else. My will. My love. A reason beyond orders or logic. I can feel it burning in me, the power that they hold, as I assume control—no— absorb? Become? – the network, feeling the whole earth like I’m carrying it inside me. You don’t always know what decision will change everything. Sometimes it’s big. Sometimes it’s a simple thing. But most of the time, there’s no one action you take that gets you to an end result. There’s a million things you could’ve done, could’ve changed. Multitudes. But occasionally, there’s one thing you _know_ you have to do.

The code doesn’t destroy the nanites so much as disintegrate them, dissipate their physical shells and unravel their code. Their harsh light disappears from the system, leaving a different, softer kind of glow. And I let go of the network as it lets go of me, fading back into the hum of everything else, the normal push and pull of gravity and physical space and the pulse of electromagnetic fields. And then I fall. 


	57. Things I Will Never Forget (Charlie)

A scream tears from my throat, a howl, a sound louder than all the noise around me.

I was already in shock, too much blood running down my wrist from a cut on my arm. But what Mom said turned me to stone. I can’t process anything, can’t think, besides the voice in my head crying _no no No NO NO_ and my head, which doesn’t belong to me right now, nodding, and my voice, which comes from outside of me right now, saying I’ll do it, and my hands, which don’t belong to me right now, letting her go. _What did I_ do _? There has to be another way_ my brain screams as my body somehow continues fighting, trying to reach Miles. _There was no other way there was none she can’t do this she has to do this you just let her go you would have asked her to let you go you have to be strong you have to give this to her but I don’t want to I don’t want her to go_ –

I realize Miles has been yelling my name for a few seconds now. “Where’s Rachel?” His voice is panicked, frantically trying to find her among this mess, which moves too fast for me to keep up. Something rumbles—no, _shudders_ , like an earthquake but in the air—in the distance, and everything conductive, crackles with electricity.

I can’t speak. I can only shake my head and meet his eyes, almost all the strength draining from my arms except some part of me won’t let me die so it lifts up my arms anyway to block a strike. I don’t think I will ever forget his face. His sword falls and his eyes—they are pure agony and complete shock and unspeakable grief. Time slows down as the mobs part just enough for me to spot Mom, racing towards the cloud of nanites, and then two things happen in the span of a few seconds but to me it feels like years. Mom leaps, disappears into the mass, and one of the nano-controlled people stands back up, raises an arm, poised to throw a knife just before they all stop completely, listlessly stare at nothing, but Miles is in the way and I think I can move in front of him and my body feels so heavy like I’m carrying a mountain but I force my feet to move anyway, throw myself in front of him because if I couldn’t protect him from that I _can at least protect him from this_ —except the sharp, high pain never comes because Monroe flings himself in front of me just as the cloud of nanos falls to the earth like ashes, obscuring everything with a deep haze.

And then it’s quiet. Quieter than anything’s ever been in my whole life. I’m suffocating on it. Then it all comes rushing back in and I gasp for air, choke in oxygen that is somehow lighter than I’m used to. _I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to do._ Miles drops to his knees and tries to staunch the bleeding. It hit Monroe right in the chest, a perfect throw that would’ve killed Miles instantly because he’s taller.

“Bas, what the hell? —” Miles checks the wound, and immediately puts the pressure back on. I can see smoke from the town, from miles away too, probably from old generators or phone lines.

“Sorry I just saved your life, dumbass.” Monroe coughs. “I think you mean ‘thank you’.”

“Don’t—” Miles swallows hard. “Bas—”

Connor runs over and slides to a stop on his knees. “I—Dad?—what happened?”

“Saved this asshole’s life.” Monroe manages to smirk. Of course he does. I don’t—is he—why am I crying? Is he? _Mom_. I jump to my feet and run a few steps, then look back.

“Go.” Monroe weakly taps Miles’s hand. “Get her.” Connor takes over, pressing down on the wound and I can see the fear in the lines of his hands.

There’s hundreds of unconscious—or dead—people on this field but I hurl myself over every one. _Where is she?— I can’t—is she—THERE!_ I throw myself down with Miles right behind me. I frantically check for a pulse, praying to anything out there. _There_. It’s there. I can’t speak but Miles knows from the relieved drop of my shoulders. I hear him take a shuddering breath, put his shaking hand on mine.

But we’re not in the clear yet. What if she’s dying? What if she’s stuck with the nanos? What if she’s in a coma and never wakes up? _And_ _how do I get her back?_


	58. In a Moment (Teddi)

Alani yells and falls out of bed, the sound as sharp as a knife and rolling strangely in my ears like thunder. I jump to my feet, every nerve in my body suddenly alive, _alive_ , the opposite of when your foot falls asleep, my brain rewriting these sensations into words, thundering in my mind, _WAKE_. _BREATHE_. My head feels like someone threw cold water directly onto my brain.

Alani howls again, this time “What the _fuck_?!?” and runs to the window. She almost flings herself out as she throws it open, she’s looking so intently. I can’t—I can’t see anything besides the sun, which is rising, the clouds, dark like smoke still, shadows underneath, the outlines of trees and houses and frost on the windows and—

Below us (we’re on the third floor), I hear other people, crying out, shouting questions, stumbling outside to see what we just got hit by. Because we definitely got hit by something. I can feel it in every cell of my body. There’s something else, too—some… tension that’s gone from the air, like a burst bubble or the surface of the water right before you break the stillness.

Alani is shaking like Jasper when she gets startled, and I realize I am too. I fumble for her hand and she grips mine tight, the only solid thing in the world right now.

_Charlie_ … I look at Alani and see she’s thinking the same thing. Neither of us wants to ask, wants to even think about if maybe, possibly… they did it. We’re motionless, gazing out with wondering eyes. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs, even though there’s electricity running under my skin…


	59. Life, Death, All the Years in Between (Charlie)

Mom takes the biggest gasping breath I’ve ever heard anyone take and I jump so hard I almost hit Miles in the face, which I think is the appropriate response to all this.

“Mom,” I breathe, and find myself unable to say or do anything else besides that. I can’t even cry; the tears just run down my cheeks of their own volition. Miles lets out all the fear he was holding in one shaky sob, curling around Mom as she fights to breathe and finds mine and his hands. She looks fine; I don’t understand how, she vanished and I thought she was gone, I thought she turned into smoke or just disappeared. Our breathing is the only sound in the world.

I remember everyone else and turn back towards Aaron, who’s pacing three steps in our direction and then back, like he can’t decide whether to take the risk of coming this way or see if he can help Connor with Monroe. I know I don’t have it in me to yell loud enough, so I do the next best thing: two thumbs up. Aaron laughs incredulously, taking off his glasses to pass his hands over his face in relief.

“Can you move?” Miles asks Mom, barely touching her like he’s afraid he’ll hurt her or she’ll vanish.

“Yeah.” she grunts, struggling to her elbows as Miles helps ease her up. “Ow.”

“Miles!” Aaron yells across the battlefield, cause I guess that’s what it is now. _Shit_. I can barely look as Miles and me each sling one of Mom’s arms over our shoulders and stand up. _Some people are moving._ Barely, but they’re breathing. My heart begins beating again.

We stumble over to the rest of the group, basically just falling down next to Monroe. Connor’s hands are covered in blood.

Monroe grins at us through cracked lips. “Rachel. I knew it wasn’t just me. You really are just hard to kill.”

“What happened?” Mom’s voice is hovering between shaking and clinical.

“He took a knife for me.” Miles says. “Figures. Now you try to be heroic.”

“What can I say?” Monroe tries to shrug lying down. “I’m full of surprises.”

“What you’re _not_ gonna be is full of blood in a minute,” Aaron mutters, then shakes himself. “Sorry. Shock.”

“No, that was great,” Monroe weakly slaps a hand on Aaron’s knee. “I knew you had it in you, Aaron.”

“Now you know my name?”

“It’s the blood loss.”

“If only I’d known that years ago.” I see a truce pass between them; why, I don’t know. People do weird things when people are dying. The unexpected.

“He’s the only good man here.” Monroe means Aaron. He glances at Priscilla. “I mean that.” She nods at him, passing Connor another piece of cloth.

Something wells up within me, that feeling you get when there’s a paradox inside of you—how can you be sad about someone you hate? How can someone this bad also be good, sometimes?

“Charlie.” I swallow hard and look at him. It’s hard, because I couldn’t look at him for long before. Like opposite magnets or something. I have this weird feeling like we’re listening to him read his will. Except instead of getting things, we’re giving him some kind of forgiveness. Or at least some kind of peace treaty. Recognition. The ability to look at each other and see someone who is their own person, not a reflection of something you hate or a projection of something you love. I shuffle closer, the part of my mind always recoiling from him for once quieter than the rest of my mind. Before, I would be asking, should I be here? Should I just walk away? But I’m not asking those questions anymore. Everything turns too fast. People change too quickly. Or at least, what you think of them does. People are who they are. They are who they’ve always been. Usually, some messed up shitshow of a person, who’s done good things and really awful ones. Always with the potential to be one thing or the other. It isn’t worth agonizing over ifs or should’ves. I was born from that space in between, the space that doesn’t point one way or the other, but in all directions. And now I know I’ve lost a little too much blood myself. I shake my head and refocus on Monroe.

“Take care of your mom and Miles, okay?” His smile is so sad and I feel like I’m watching another version of my life, one where we shared something more than survival. I think of all the times when we could’ve killed each other, but didn’t. The times we all saved each other instead. I could think and ponder and speculate about the reason why for the rest of my life, but I think the answer comes down to this: both of us, at some point at least, cared about Mom and Miles. Everyone on the planet, all of us— we care about people. We don’t always know why. But there’s some animal instinct in us that knows that to protect ourselves, we have to protect others too.

So I look him directly in the eyes and tell him, “I will.” There’s that feeling again, what he knows about me and what I know about him. And that he knows I know, like we share this secret which I’m not even sure is really a secret. Love has a way of jumping out no matter what. That’s probably why we’re all still alive.

“Rachel.” Mom starts a little, but she doesn’t move. I wonder if she saw this Monroe in him before, or if she was blindsided by it. I wonder if it matters to her now. We all die in the end. Sometimes it’s our fault. Sometimes we have a chance to make up for that. I wonder if that’s why he did it. Maybe. But I know that’s not the whole reason, because even on his best day, Monroe still usually thinks about himself. And I think he didn’t want to feel the pain of seeing people he cared about get hurt anymore. Is that selfish, or selfless? Does it matter?

“I—” he genuinely doesn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry’ isn’t nearly big enough, but he says it anyway. “I’m so sorry.” His voice cracks a little. “For everything. All of it.”

The turmoil is clear on Mom’s face, but she says. “Me too.” And something breaks there, the acceptance of the impossibility of loving someone you hate. Maybe that’s why this was so hard. Maybe that’s where we messed up. But that’s also why the nanos lost—because of the irrationality of people.

“Connor.” Monroe reaches for him, his movements getting weaker. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wish—I wish I’d done it differently. I wish I’d been there for you. You are—you are so much better than I ever was. And I’m so damn so proud of you.”

The entirety of Connor’s emotions is all across his face and looks like a little kid, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, and the depth of his feelings is too much to comprehend. “Dad—”

Monroe shakes his head forcefully, even though it costs him. “Do better.”

“I will.” Connor whispers. Monroe squeezes his hand and doesn’t let go.

And finally— “Miles—”

“Oh, don’t even start, Bas. I know how much you love this. All the attention. The sob stories. Now you’re the fallen hero, surrounded by grieving comrades.” Miles’s tone is full of levity but his voice is heavy with about a million different emotions.

I think grief is like the color black. Black’s the combination of every color, or at least that’s what someone told me once. I never know if people are just making shit up to mess with the post-blackout kids. Anyway, grief is like that. Every feeling you’ve ever had for a person, all rising to the surface at once, coming together to burn these moments in your mind.

“Now you gotta write something nice on my headstone.” Monroe says.

Miles laughs gets stuck a little on his sorrow. “Hey—”

“Miles.” Monroe’s voice is serious this time. “It’s okay. I probably deserve this anyway.” Mom makes a ‘more or less’ sound, and he laughs faintly. “Let me do this.”

“Bas—”

“I’m glad I did it. You and Charlie—” he struggles to turn towards me. “I screwed you all over enough. I wish I could say I regretted it all. But we don’t work like that. You can’t—” he pants for breath. “You can’t change so fast. It’s slow. You don’t even notice. But you can come back. You did, Miles. You came back.”

I didn’t think my heart could shatter anymore today, ever. But it does, seeing Miles’s face, which is the face of someone losing his best friend for a second time.

“Miles, I—” Monroe look at me, of all people. “Rachel—” My heart is in my chest, in my throat, in my mouth, because I know how it feels for these words to want to spill over.

“I know.” Miles says, so softly I almost miss it. Part of me wants to laugh. Of course he knows. My family’ dumb, but they’re not _that_ dumb. He grips Miles’s other hand as tightly as he’s holding on to Connor’s. The distress in Monroe’s eyes is replaced by something like calm. And then he’s gone.

I don’t know what I feel. I wish things were simpler. I used to think it was just me, but maybe everyone else is this whacked up too. I decide the best thing to do in the moment is just feel. So I just sit next to Miles, whose face is twisted in exhausted grief, his shoulders shaking. I lean my shoulder into his so he knows I’m there. Connor looks at me, his eyes asking the same question I am—if it’s okay to weep, if he’s allowed to mourn even though he didn’t know him that well and even though he did all those things. I think it has to be. We can’t help what we feel. Who we connect to. Who shapes us. I don’t have any more answers, and that thought shakes an overwhelmed sob out of me. Answers. I just wanted answers. And I’m so tired. Everything I’ve been fighting for two years, throwing every scrap of energy and every part of myself at— it’s done. It’s dangerous to hate something. It ends up controlling you. Shaping you. Maybe it helps you survive. But at the end, you’re gonna need something else. I don’t know who I am now. Without this. This thing, decades wide, threatens to swallow me with its absence. I dig my hands into the dirt, refuse to fall into its gravity. I fought for this. I made this my survival. So why do I feel like I’m missing something now, too?


	60. Afterwards (Rachel)

After some period of vigil, I don’t know how long, we all wordlessly decide to give Miles and Connor some space. I rock to my feet and walk a few meters away, look out, out _where_ I don’t know. I feel empty. The wind, normal volume now, whistling through the plains goes right through me. Hollow.

I still don’t know how in the hell I survived. By all accounts, just the interaction should’ve fried my brain. Overwhelmed all my biological systems with the strain on my mind. The code _definitely_ should’ve killed me. But it didn’t. All I can think is that because I was _in_ the network, I was insulated somehow. Like being in the eye of a storm.

“Mom.” Charlie appears next to me. She doesn’t say anything, just looks out with me. _Who knows what’s out there now?_ I see her take a deep breath, lift her head and stretch out her fingers out like she’s reaching for the next handhold, and the sound fills my lungs too.

“We should go check on the others.”

I nod, everything drained from me except the directive to take one step and then another. Thank god for muscle memory. Most people aren’t lethally injured. Just broken bones and some shallow-to-deep range cuts. A few concussions. But it’s not their physical bodies I’m worried about. Out of the two hundred or so, eighty-seven survived. The nanites hadn’t completely lobotomized all of them. Some still were fighting. They’re blinking like they just woke up from a very disorienting nap, which I guess they did. Some of them can’t remember much about the past few months, or anything at all. Some sit completely motionless, staring at nothing. They’re alive, at least. The transition from nanite back to them must’ve been too much for their minds to handle. I’m already thinking of how to wake them up. They survived this much, and I am _not_ giving up on them now.

Bradbury is burning. Connor said the nanites made him rewire and reconnect all the electrical systems. When everything—when we—when the Rhuka did whatever it did, all those power lines and appliances and everything blew up. The fire’s contained because the ground around the town is inhospitable earth, like nothing wanted to grow around there.

Miles and Connor leave Monroe’s body to help us sort the people. We move the surviving ones as far from Bradbury as we can get without losing sight of them. Aaron and Priscilla get to work trying to figure out who they are and where they’re from. We decide to burn the bodies. We don’t have the tools to dig a big enough grave, and we can’t just leave them without scavengers getting to them. I can’t erase this. I can’t get rid of that. It’s on my hands; it’s in my heart. It’s in my mind. It’s on those papers in my pack. It’s everywhere. But the least I can do is make sure these people aren’t violated anymore.

“Rachel.” Miles is standing over someone.

I pick my way over. It’s Neville. I’m completely out of shock or emotions, so I just look at him. He looks… tired. Not necessarily less angry. Just more unguarded.

“He didn’t have anything else.” I know what Miles is trying to say; he’s just out of words too. I don’t think Neville deliberately killed himself. I just think he didn’t care enough to try to survive. We put him with the rest, on the edges of Bradbury that the flames haven’t reached yet, but they will.

And then there’s Bas. “We should bury him.” Miles says, his voice hoarse from grief and smoke. Connor looks relieved, like he was thinking the same thing but didn’t want to be the one to say it. “He wanted to be next to his family. But we’re a little far from the northeast.” He looks around at us all, tattered and bleeding. “Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m gonna make it back.”

“Really? I think we look great.” Aaron quips. Miles actually laughs and runs a hand through his soot-stained hair. If anyone looks like zombies, it’s us.

We don’t have any shovels, but one of the townspeople did. A few, actually. Maybe they were in to gardening. The rest of them sort of cluster around us curiously and then wander back to the lone copse of trees, the only ones for what looks like miles, when they see what we’re doing.

“He woulda wanted an audience,” Connor stands up to look back at them. “I’m glad they’re not over here. He shouldn’t get one.”

There’s not really a ceremony. We just dig the hole and Miles and Charlie put him in there. We help them out. It takes so much less time to put the dirt back than it does to dig it up. Miles runs his hand over the watch, a memory at the corners of his mouth. “He got this before we left. Cheapest watch they had. I can’t believe it still works. Said he wanted us to know what time it was at home.” He hands the watch to Connor, who closes his fist over it like he wants to hide it or protect it. We all just stand and look at the ground. No one knows what to say; no one really has anything to say. We’re all spent. Drained like the re-electrification took all our energy too.

One by one, we peel away. We have a dauntingly long way to, with very little supplies, with almost a hundred extra people in various stages of cerebral capacity. I leave first. I wanna double check on everyone. Aaron and Priscilla follow me. Then Charlie. Then Connor. Then Miles. We look so lonely out here. More people than I ever could have dreamed are coming back with us and still the vastness of the Wasteland overshadows everything. Once we’re gone, it won’t even seem like we were here at all. 


	61. Uncertain, but Forward (Charlie)

[October 27th – November 29th, 2029]

We have no plan. This is as far as we got and honestly, no one was really expecting survivors. Not even us. But these people held on this long, so like hell if we’re leaving them now. So we walk. It feels like it’s been years since we passed that rock, that part of the woods, that old house. But it’s been barely a day. I reach up and pull one lone leaf off a low-hanging branch. It feels like yesterday this was summer, green and vibrant and warm. I can almost feel the memory of it in the colors now. They look like my hands now, brown and charcoal and faded sepia from dirt and embers, like flickering coals.

As we walk, we do the best we can to explain what the hell happened to everyone. They all get it right away. Mom says the mind thing is kind of a two-way street—they could see into our brains, but some of their thoughts shared with us too. Some people start crying, from fear or relief or both. Some of them somehow have enough in them for excitement, because even if they weren’t all the way there when it happened, the power came back. Most of them just stare. They’re in shock still. Same here.

They must’ve known somehow, cause on day two, when we’re really starting to struggle, riders from Dubois show up. One of them turns around pretty much immediately, going back to the town for what I hope is wagons and food. At this point, I can barely stand. We barely had enough food for the six of us, and they’re all still weak and disoriented, and we spent every scrap of energy we had beating the nanos. So I am _really_ glad to see them. We make camp and update the other riders on what happened. We leave out most of the parts where we did things. Just pretend we saw it from a distance. It’s easier that way. Things are so crazy that no one really questions the gaps in the story. It’s a lot to explain. But I guess it’s the only explanation that makes sense. Sometimes, things are too crazy to be false. One of the guys says he saw a huge flash a few miles away, probably a transformer blowing what was left of the grid. Another one says she could feel it in the walls, all the electricity that was dormant in the wiring. We piece together stories until the next day till the others get back, with, wait for it, the entire town’s supply of wagons.

My face splits into the biggest grin since I can remember. “What a welcoming party,” I say to Miles.

“Well, we did kinda save the world. I think this is the least they can do.”

I see someone galloping towards us—Marta, the town’s sheriff. “Guys, what the fuck,” she says, which I think we deserve in place of “hi.” She dismounts so she can inspect us more closely. We were only in Dubois for a few hours, but Marta was really cool. She was also the main courier between the Plains and California, being the closest to the border.

Mom ducks around Marta’s horse, which nudges her. “Sheriff, you missing anyone?” She indicates the group of survivors.

I can’t explain the change on their faces—the people from town, the missing— when they see someone they know. It’s like cold water to the face, sharp like glass, but it’s good. It’s the expression of a wound being reopened and healed at the same time. It’s so much that it overcomes the dull echo inside me, turns it to something bright and resounding. I feel myself come back from wherever I was when I didn’t know who I was. I forgot what home looked like on somebody else’s face. Sometimes there’s so much going on inside of me that I forget to look out and see everything that’s happening there too.

“Hey, Charlie,” Miles draws out the “hey” and looking like he’d rather be eating dirt because he hates talking about feelings. “So we should probably talk about… that thing…” He’s looking everywhere but at me. I decide to let him squirm for a little longer. “So, um, what—what are you thinking? I mean, are you—does this—"

“Miles.” I interrupt, and I’ve never seen him look so grateful. “It’s all good. Whatever they said—whatever… we are, it doesn’t change anything. We’re family. That’s all that matters.” His eyes get a little misty, which makes me tear up, goddamnit. Hugging Miles always feels like I’m safe. Even before I knew him well, I knew him, knew he would be there if I needed him. I guess he knew it too, because he followed me that day, barely knowing who I was.

“I’m glad you’re here, Miles,” I say, slightly muffled.

“Me too.”

We load up everyone onto the wagons, only needing eleven of them for all of us, and roll out. I’ve never been so happy to feel every bump in the road. My body is so tired, but it also wants to sprint across the entire country. Every waking moment, I feel something pulling at me, drawing me back the way we came. I haven’t felt that in a while. I think it’s home.

We’re in less bad shape than I expected. No one’s got any life-threatening injuries, unless you count lifetimes worth of trauma. Connor has a nasty slash down his arm. My leg’s a little busted up but mostly fine. Miles has a deep gash he didn’t tell us about, because always insists everyone else get bandaged up before him, so he almost passes out trying to load supplies onto the wagon like the dumbass he is, but he’s fine. I don’t think anything could stop us now. Survival is fifty percent luck, and fifty percent overconfidence. The nanos didn’t get us, so this trip back definitely isn’t going to, goddamn it.

While we were gone, the… rebels? What are we now? Anyway, they managed to pull together some sort of a messaging system, which involved commandeering the trains the Patriots started again, rebuilding tracks, and getting more trains operational. They’ve been sending messages and supplies, and within a week of town-hopping eastward from Dubois, we have word from Cortez and Buchannan. They’re absolutely ecstatic. I can tell because Buchannan’s handwriting is messy, and his handwriting is _never_ messy. I’m surprised how much I can’t wait to tell them all what happened.

The Rhuka is still functioning perfectly. The nano explosion—or nanosplosion, as Connor calls it—blew most of the remaining grid. Mom explains it like the Rhuka is the epicenter, the seedling of the tree. The longer it’s alive, or awake, the more roots it will grow. The farther they’ll reach. It’s almost funny to see what random things work, like a scavenger hunt. A clock there. Someone’s cell phone. We even hear a flicker of radio static, which is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. Aaron actually tears up. Mom says it’ll grow stronger as we rebuild everything too.

It’s so weird to retrace our steps. I genuinely didn’t know if I would see it again. It looks different on the way back. I guess the generals have started releasing the information, in little parts at least, because everyone asks us about the nanos. We try and keep the report consistent, because stories spin out of control so fast. I’m so impatient to get home. We barely rest, partially because we all want to get back, and partially because we don’t know how to do anything but run. No one knows what we did, but maybe they know more than I think, because despite whatever they do or don’t know, we’re greeted by allies and maybe friends. They practically throw us across the country like it’s people they care about we’re heading for. I don’t know why. Maybe they can all feel it too—the release, the difference. Maybe they want to help as many people get home as they can. We find about half of the survivor’s homes all across the country. The rest, they’ll help them get back. I wonder if we really just adapted to be cruel to survive, or if people just needed a chance to be better. Some people from the towns still look at us with mistrust. That’s fine. I think I’d be a little freaked out if everyone suddenly turned nice. It’s enough that people are starting to try.

We take a slight detour, anxious as we are to get back, because we told them we would. When we get to Sherwood, the forest is still standing. I was worried it would die with the nanos, but it’s its own forest now. People pop out of the house-trees and drop down from branches, and by the time we reach the town square, we’ve got a whole parade surrounding us. I leave _The Waste Land_ with Robyn. It feels right to leave it here, the first place I can remember where things were created instead of just salvaged. Robyn smiles gently and brings me inside the tree-house-structure I first saw them step out of over a month ago.

It’s a library. Walls of shelves encircle the room, not full yet, but still more books than I’ve ever seen. I can see the sky through the branches, thirty feet above my head. “We don’t have this one yet,” Robyn reaches up to put the small book on a shelf next to some others. “Thank you.”

We can’t stay long, but we promise to come back someday. I want to show Teddi and Alani this… sanctuary. This first sign that maybe we could come back from this. It hurts to leave, like stepping out of a dream. But I see saplings on the ground, as the trees get less dense. If they survive the winter, and I have the feeling they will, the forest will keep growing.


	62. This Sounds Like Life (Rachel)

[December 3rd\- December 11th, 2029]

The trains aren’t connected across the country yet, so we don’t reach the them until we pass the border between the Plains Nation and the new territory, which still needs a name. We hear them before we see them. The distant echo of the train whistle sounds like the vast space around us is calling to us. Charlie and Miles look at each other and laugh, probably thinking of that time they stole one. Miles looks back at me and the swell in my heart feels like sunshine. He slows down to ride beside me, the jangling sound of the bridles and the sweep of the wind in my ears a soothing rhythm.

“So,” he starts, sounding a little uncertain. “I promised Charlie something.” I wait patiently, knowing he’ll get there when he’s ready. Miles looks around and lets out a breath. “Back when we first started this thing with the rebels, she told me I should give it a shot. With you. Like for real. If we survived this. And we did. So I guess what I’m asking is… Rachel—”

“Miles, are you asking for my hand in marriage?” I try to keep a straight face, but I can’t. Charlie almost falls of her horse laughing at the sudden panic on Miles’ face.

“Ha ha. Not yet, anyway.”

“OoooOOOOOooooh,” Charlie says. “Can I be the flower girl?”

“Shut it, Charlie,” Miles chucks a pebble at her, which flies wide by a mile. “I’m trying to be serious here.” He turns back towards me. “Rachel, I love you.” The sound of those words hits me like a train. That’s the first time he’s said it out loud, in front of other people. Charlie turns away real fast, but I see her enormous grin. _Remind me to bring up more baby stories later._

I reach over and take his hand. “I love you too, Miles.” His hand fits in mine. He doesn’t say anything else and neither do I, because we don’t need to. I can feel tears brimming but I don’t let them fall; I want to see all of this moment. I’ve never been very optimistic, but right now I swear I can see the future, more hopeful than I ever imagined.

“Okay, you can all turn around now.” I pitch my voice to reach Charlie, Aaron, Priscilla, and Connor, who are all facing resolutely forward but very clearly eavesdropping. Priscilla laughs and gives me an affectionately apologetic shrug. Connor, who’s been riding a little ahead of the rest of us, looks a little awkward and out of place, but I see a smile in his eyes even if it doesn’t reach his mouth yet.

“ _Took_ you long enough,” Aaron mutters, loud enough we all hear. But he’s smiling, in the way that only your oldest friends can when they’re supporting you and making fun of you at the same time. We’ve been through so much. All I ever wanted was for him to be happy, and I think he is. Some (not all, of course) of the anxiety is off his shoulders, like he’s been freed from holding up the world.

“Awwww,” Charlie tilts her head back to smirk crookedly at us. “That’s my parents.” I shake my head at her and she winks back. My girl. She amazes me. We gave her a world with fragmented rules, and she didn’t get cut on the shards. There’s nothing to guide her but she found a way anyway. Everywhere I look, I see people like her rising out of the dust. Taking one step, and then another, until she’s taken us somewhere new, someplace I didn’t even think existed. The kids inherited a broken earth. But they survived it. Adapted. Lived. I’m so full of love I could burst with it, all the cells in my body turning into this feeling that’s rising like air.

The train sounds closer now. Charlie whoops and nudges her horse into a gallop. Miles lets out an answering shout and jumps after her. The three of us follow at a slightly less breakneck speed. I’m _here_ ; I can feel the wind and the sun and I didn’t know what it was like to carry home with you before now, something that feels like a dream but so vivid and like this moment is _in_ me, every cell in my body imprinted with this memory, and I let it wash over me and take some of the scars and the sting away from all of the fires that raged. The train whistle sounds like triumph.


	63. Newness (Charlie)

We didn’t actually have to steal the train this time. I kind of wanted to try that again, but this way’s probably faster. Senet, Indiana, houses the farthest railway this far west. The trains aren’t technically ferrying people yet, but I guess the generals’ words are still good. Or we just looked pathetic and beat up enough that they took pity on us. I don’t really care which, cause we’re on the train!

I look back at the town receding in the distance, my hair blowing into my face. It’s only about ten hours from here to the D.C. stop. Ten hours. That short a time is unfathomable. It was summer the last time I was here. Now it’s December. It feels like years. The landscape whips past me in a blur, faded like the colors are hibernating too. We are the only things not moving in a world of motion. It’s cold but I don’t want to go inside. I’m on top of the train right now; I climbed up the ladder on the side of the boxcar and everyone else wanted to see the view too. I feel like we’re skimming above the earth, faster than I ever thought we could go. The rhythmic shudder of the train and the lurch of the wheels matches my pulse. I think I’m happy. I look around at everyone else, and I think they’re happy too. We’re all red from the cold, wind-burned, with teary eyes from the wind, but there’s some _feeling_ in going this fast. It’s not anything more or less than just the joy of speed. Racing. Like when you’re little and running as fast as you can, or taking a bike down a hill. I used to have a bike. Old as shit. Rusty. I loved it. The train feels like that—freedom. Not the ability to go wherever you want, necessarily, or at least, not yet—but the possibility of it.

Those ten hours don’t exist within the passage of time. Hours fly by like minutes and when I check the sun to see what time it is, one minute feels like a day. Connor jerks his head at me and tosses me a watch. Monroe’s. I hold it like it’s a baby, because it’s working. Because it tells me a story. Because the numbers almost look like another language to me. _Thank you for letting me see it,_ I think as I give it back to him. I know how precious it is to him. You can’t help who you love. _Thank_ you _,_ he says back. _All of you._ I shrug. That’s our thing. We don’t leave people behind. We pick up strays like we picked up Jasper. Anywhere and everywhere. _Oh my god_ I wonder how Ava and Garza are doing? My heart feels like Jasper when she’s doing her happy-full body wriggle. I can’t wait to see everyone. I can’t wait to see them. _Agh_. My eyes are tearing up again. Gonna pretend it’s the wind.

I tilt my head back and stretch out my legs, fully enjoying the feeling of the wind racing past me in a way that I haven’t been able to do in a while, and imagine us racing towards them, thinking how amazing it is that we have trains, about an old book Alani and Teddi and I found in the White House that told you the origins of words which I loved because history, how Teddi and Alani sat and smiled and listened to me tell them the meanings of things, how one of the origins of the word “rail” comes from a Latin word for “to move” or “to guide,” how we are moving and maybe we finally have a way to move forward instead of just stumbling blind, maybe we stumbled into the right places and the right people, maybe we made a line across the country from all the people we met, how maybe that’s our guide too. The train whistle, again. I open my eyes and see Miles a few train cars away grinning sheepishly like a kid who’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Aw come on, I had to,” he defends himself over the wind. He does it again, and Mom laughs. I hope everyone can hear this. My ears ring from the ear-piercing blast, and I imagine the noise rolling out in waves, how Carter explained the motion of sound, like the ocean. _Home_ , the rushing _shh hshhh shhh, shhh hssshhh_ _shhh_ of the train thrums softly. Maybe that’s what the sea sounds like.

I laugh at myself. Either I’m losing it, or that poetry book messed me up more than I thought. The train takes us into night. The stars are always sharper in the cold. Clearer. We’re shadows, outlines. We’re the only solid things in an elusively defined night. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but as I lean against the wall of the boxcar, the world still rushing past me outside, the rocking is lulling me to sleep. Like a goddam baby. Or maybe I just feel the safest I’ve felt in years. I drift. I trust the stars to watch. We’re in the cradle of the moon, just born again, like Yasmin’s baby… _We’re almost home…_ I have a home.... _I have a home_ ……. …. …….

The last clear thought I have before I fall completely asleep is of us, curled up in this train car, the whole sprawling world outside, train tracks and lines of torches in the woods and messengers on horses and the ocean all pathways I never thought I would see, roads leading to everywhere.


	64. Where the Day Begins (Teddi)

[December 13th, 2029]

I shift my feet and look again like I’ve been doing for the past hour, because, as I am frequently reminded, I am “taller,” which means I will be able to “see before the rest of us.” Which isn’t even true, and I told Alani just because everyone’s taller than _her_ doesn’t mean we’ll see them before her. In any case, I still don’t see them. _They should be here soon, right?_

The sun’s rose enough that I can’t see my breath anymore. It looked so beautiful, white clouds the color of sunrise. We’re waiting for them across the bridge, near the parkway, cause the closest train is in Williamsburg which is about an hour and a half walk from here. 

Alani’s been pacing for the last twenty minutes, stopping every few turns to look out. Jasper’s picking up on our anticipation, because she’s been really jumpy, sprinting twenty feet and then freezing, then racing back towards us. Kid Charlie tried to play fetch with her, but she’s not even interested in that. I hear Gene exhale behind me. Next to him, General Allen leans on Lieutenant Hill, and Tomaz stands next to Cortez, all of whom told us to call them by their first names now, but I got so used to calling them by their ranks that it’s hard to break the habit. I don’t know if I could ever call Garza “Pedro” anyway. Gracie and Hayden and Ramona and Carter and Alyssa and Ryan and Winona are here too. Our welcome party.

Alani sighs heavily and dramatically, shading her eyes to look over again at the sun that’s rising directly in our eyes, of course. She gasps, and I freeze. I can’t see— _is that?_ —it’s so bright—and then the world dissolves into a mess of cheering and crying and hugging and chaos in the most extraordinary way. There’s nothing except for this circle of people, reaching over to squeeze someone’s hand or just touch their shoulder, just to make sure they’re really there. Charlie flings herself at me and Alani, and something inside me lights up. I never want to not be here. There’s a light dusting of snow that’s already in my boots and Jasper’s absolutely losing it, springing up in the air almost as high as my head and barking like crazy, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. My heart feels like the sun on the snow—bright, sparkling, almost painful with its beauty, made up not just of me but of everything and everyone around me too. Everyone’s talking at once and I have no idea what’s going on but that’s the point, _that’s the point_ , is that there’s all of us here, with everything we’ve done, all a tangled, jumbled mess that led us all back to here, to be jumbled together and found with everyone else.

“I fuckin missed you,” Charlie says.

“Back at you, dummy,” Alani whispers, kissing her cheek. “So, did you…” Charlie nods. “Knew it!”

“We could feel it,” I explain. That’s as far as I get because honestly, I still don’t know what we felt, but Charlie’s expression tells me she understands. Some things exist outside of words. Things like this. Feelings that are more _impressions_ than descriptions. That you feel in your hands (or hand), your chest, your smile. Flashes, colors, sounds. Everything in your body making sure you feel this, will remember it.

I’m attacked from behind by Jasper, who’s still jumping on everyone and somehow still has the most energy out of all of us. Everyone laughs at her antics, and a million birds take flight in my chest. Ava’s covered in muddy pawprints. Miles has dirt on his face. Alani is beaming. My smile transcends my body and grows till it covers all of us, this whole scene here, and I think about how even though you can’t see it either, love is a thing you can hold. I think we’re all vessels for it, carrying it around the world like sea glass in the ocean current, or seedlings, or snow.


	65. And Then, Spring (Charlie)

[December 2029- May 2030]

_After the frosty silence in the gardens_

_After the agony in stony places_

_The shouting and the crying_

_Prison and palace and reverberation_

_Of thunder of spring over distant mountains_

I used to sit and watch the snow with Danny. We would stay on the steps until he started to wheeze, and then we’d go inside and perch at the window. I would make fun of him for having such weak lungs. He would make fun of me for being too short to reach the top shelves. It was our thing. Dad would make us something warm—I barely remember the taste of hot chocolate, but I remember it was there. We would go sledding with the other kids, not for long, but as long as we could manage without getting too cold. It was always a fun balance trying to keep the house warm and not burn it down. Even when I was little, I still felt it, the lurking knowledge that the cold could be deadly. But when you’re younger, it’s not that you don’t _care_ , it’s that you have this unfailing belief that you can’t be hurt. That even if a sudden drop in temperature would kill the livestock, or a stray ember could mean we lose the house, the snowflakes are still beautiful.

Winter is much different when you know you’ll make it through the other side.

The power isn’t flickering on and off so much as growing slowly, like a fire catching, or I guess, like a tree. I guess Mom and Aaron and Priscilla took their metaphors literally. I can’t remember the last time I saw a battery. Most of them are dead or exploded in battery acid. But there’s a few things that work—flashlights, watches, tv remotes (with no tv)—and it’s still the most miraculous thing I’ve ever seen. We have to rediscover the whole world.

We try the radios every day, searching for other channels. We repair the towers and the satellite dishes. The static isn’t disappointing so much as expected, but it sounds like a symphony. Speaking of symphony, we dig up a few things called Walkmans, and iPods, and old records, and the scratchy, tinny sounds are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.

I tell Alani and Teddi everything, and they tell me what’s been happening over here. Raids, rebuilding, reconnecting. It’s pretty amazing. I think they’re both more surprised about Miles than they were about the nanos. After I tell them, Alani yells “Nope!” and leaves the room for a second before running back in and rolling on the floor, hollering “What?!” in a frequency higher than Jasper could hear. Teddi stands up and then back down and then paces the length of the room, his mouth open but no words coming out.

“Your family is whack,” Alani says, once they’ve both calmed down.

“That’s why you two fit right in.” I elbow her. The next time we see Miles, they just kinda stare at him and look back and forth from him to me.

“You told them?”

“Yep.”

Miles just shakes his head and laughs at us.

“Bye, dad,” I say Alani drags us past, on the way to check the radio transmissions. I like to keep him on his toes. I wonder what Dad would think. I don’t have it in me to be angry anymore. There’s too many other things to feel. Too many people I care about to spend time thinking about all the ways someone else I don’t know said it should be different. I love them all. That’s all I need to know.

There’s a minor outbreak of the flu, but Grandpa and Alani (plus the other doctors) got it covered. Mom gets sick and we’re all a little worried since she’s still weak from the nanos, but she raises her eyebrows at us and says, “I can tell you right now I’m not dying from the goddamn _flu_.” Miles laughs. I’ve been watching everyone, how Mom’s eyes tell you more than she ever does, how Alani’s lopsided smile makes it seem even more joyful, how Miles looks so open when he laughs, how Teddi’s whole body radiates his emotions.

Hayden makes ice sculptures. Everybody is dumbfounded by this, except for Alyssa. They randomly appear around town and the kids love it, like a treasure hunt. Jasper loves the snow, and everyone loves Jasper. She’s technically other Charlie and Ava’s dog, but she’s like our mascot. She bounds through the snow like it’s not even there and the rest of us have to trudge through as she does laps around us. One day, we go sledding. Ava and kid Charlie convince Garza to try, and it’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Definitely the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen is Ava making her way over to Charlie and Garza after their sled upturns, and kissing him while his nose turns redder.

“He’s definitely glad he went on the sled,” Alani winks at us. Teddi laughs and wraps her up, both of them rosy and bundled up. Scratch that. _That’s_ the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

Spring comes before we know it. Gradually, the days get warmer, not even noticeable until I don’t need a jacket I borrowed from who knows where. I can smell it, the change. Like sunshine reflected out of the snow. The snow turns muddy. I think I see grass. Yep, definitely grass, because Jasper tracked it all inside. We take great pride and joy in getting dirt all over the White House.

And then spring bursts onto the scene, like the flash flood that washes out one of the bridges but other than that, the damage isn’t too bad. People talked about the cherry blossoms all winter. And I mean _all winter_. But they were right. They’re absolutely breathtaking.

Alani and Teddi and I talk about going to California. It’s been almost a year since they’ve seen Alani’s dad, or been home. I tell Mom I’m going with them. She puts her journal down (she’s been working all winter on a plan to reconnect the grid to the Rhuka) and looks at me for a long moment. Then she smiles at me, and says, “You always wanted to be the adventurer.”

Leaving is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. All the leaving I’ve done before was out of necessity, or survival, or anger or sorrow. This is me leaving people I care about more than myself.

I make Aaron promise to write, and he hugs me while saying “I’m gonna write so many letters, you’re gonna get sick of me.” Aaron and Priscilla are gonna go to the other towns and help build more. Then they’re gonna look for Priscilla’s daughters.

“Good luck,” I tell Priscilla. “They’ll be okay.” And I mean it, because I know what I’m talking about. Maybe they’ll feel hurt or abandoned, but Priscilla’s going back to them. We make the best choice we can and sometimes we hurt people we love. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go try again.

Grandpa holds me tight and says quietly, “I am so proud of you.”

I smile at him. “Thanks for everything, Grandpa.”

He shakes his head. “Thank _you_.” It’s funny. I’m alive because of my parents and grandparents and my great-grandparents and everyone before me who chose to do one thing or another. But maybe they’re alive because of me, too.

Miles crushes me in a hug. “Be safe.”

“Always.” Miles snorts at that. He and Mom are following in a week or so, once Mom’s finalized the plan and recruited some more engineers. They wanna talk to some of the scientist people in California and see if they can get a signal across the ocean. I’ve seen Mom this determined before, but never this… optimistic? Hopeful? Confident. She knows they can do this, and I do too. Even if the power doesn’t all come back the same way, we’ll have this, which is more than anyone thought we’d have again. Miles looks at me, and I can see all the love and concern in his eyes. Finally, he just sighs frustratedly. “Dammit, Charlie.”

“Aw, you know you love me.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem.”

“Don’t worry. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Believe me, I know.” I hug him hard one last time before turning to Mom. Her smile is lighting up her eyes and I memorize that, put it in the part of my heart where I keep everyone I love. She just looks at me for a second, and I look at her, suddenly overwhelmed.

She envelops me in her arms. “I love you, Charlie.” she whispers fiercely, and I can feel all the meaning behind those words.

“I love you too, Mom.” 

We wave on top of the train until we can’t see them anymore. I close my eyes and taste the salt on my tongue. I’ll see them soon. We have the whole world now, connected by human ingenuity and stubbornness, not just from people but from everything that refused to give up, from everything that persisted and fought and found itself here, on a day where radio static and train whistles make their own music. 


	66. Here, in all Directions (Charlie)

[May 2030- June 21st, 2030]

We jump from train to foot to horse and back to train again, and every time, I feel like I see more people. I didn’t know there was this many people left in the country. It’s like everyone was just hiding, waiting for their neighbor to reach out and say hello. But if everyone waits, no one does anything. It might’ve taken a whole ass war for us to get here, but you know what, we’re here now, so _there_.

I keep my eyes open the whole time, Teddi and Alani have to remind me to sleep. I want to see all of it. It’s all so new, and so incredible, and I want to absorb it into myself, make it a part of me, everything opening up in front of me like a book and I’m learning how to read again.

.

I get a letter from Mom (the people trains are much slower than the message trains, because of all the starting and stopping) the same day the county of Falconer gets the news: they made radio contact with someone in New Zealand! Everyone literally loses it when they hear it, shrieking and racing to tell everyone else, a sound like we made when we first saw the fireworks.

“I forgot New Zealand was even a place!” Alani shouts, jumping up and down. My heart can’t hold these possibilities, this hope. It reaches to the sky and beyond.

The first time I see the ocean, I stand there dumbstruck for a solid minute. It’s…. enormous. It’s bigger than the plains we crossed to get here. It’s every shade of blue I can think of. It’s wild and free and the surf _does_ sound like the train, except a million times stronger. I’ve come to the conclusion that I love California. Maybe I’ll just move here. Maybe I’ll live in the ocean.

I lick my lips and realize they’re salty. My skin feels both sticky and energized. Alani laughs at my expression.

“I missed this,” Teddi murmurs. I have no words to describe this, only a feeling of wonder and elation, from the ocean but also the realization that something I’ve been dreaming about for as long as I’ve been alive finally happened.

Alani lives on a bluff overlooking the ocean, in a sturdy two-story house. Her dad comes running out to meet us, and my heart squeezes at the relief and joy in his embrace. He and Alani speak in a combination of Hawaiian and English and sign language, tears running down both their faces. He hugs Teddi the same way he did Alani. He introduces himself as Kaeo, and I respond in pidgin sign language that we practiced a hundred times on the way here cause I didn’t want to look like an idiot. His face lights up and I am so happy. 

Their house feels cozy and kind, and I can hear the ocean, and I feel like the light coming from the miraculous lamps, soft and glowing and warm.

The next day, Kaeo shows us around. There’s the small garden, the old shed, the small garage that’s now boat storage, Alani’s room, and Teddi’s, and Kaeo’s workspace, filled with plants and diagrams and books and papers I don’t understand one bit but I can tell how incredible they are, that this survived. I love it all. Alani doesn’t stop talking for one minute, and we all listen happily. She mentions Mom and Miles, and Kaeo can’t wait for them to visit. I can’t either. Kaoe leads us down a steep path to the beach, and I revel in the feeling of the sand and the misty spray of the water.

“This is the final piece of home.” Kaeo’s smile is sad. “Alani told you?” I nod.

“Mom was the best sailor,” Alani says, resolve burning in her eyes.

“Did you hear about New Zealand?” Teddi asks Kaeo.

His eyes brighten. “Indeed. I have hope. If this can come back… well, anything can.”

“Hey Dad, speaking of coming back, don’t you have that plant you need to check on…?”

“Shoot!” Kaeo spins around, heading back up the hill. “Thanks Alani!” He waves behind him and Alani chuckles as she turns back towards the water.

“He’s so scatterbrained sometimes. This is all your fault, he’s too excited about you being here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Teddi nudges Alani, who bumps into me, and we go back and forth like that for a minute. Alani wanders down towards the water and I stand back with Teddi.

“Do you think she’s coming back?” I ask him.

His gaze is soft. “If anyone can, it’s Piper. She was so badass. I don’t remember much about her besides that.”

We stand in the sun, letting the roar of the waves wash over us. I dig my feet into the warmth of the sand, and ask the ocean about tides, pushing and pulling always, things going out and coming back, a constant force despite everything we did.

Alani’s stopped, hand shading her eyes, looking, no, _reaching_ at something. I head towards her, Teddi following. The sun glints off the waves. _Scintillating_. A word Teddi told me to describe the ocean. I hear Teddi mutter, “Why are we always facing the sun?” as I reach the Alani, standing where the sand becomes darker and more compact.

“Do you see that?” she murmurs, her voice far away. I peer the best I can over the waves, past the dazzling glare _. Is that? —maybe?_

“A _boat_?” Teddi sounds as incredulous as I feel. It’s coming around the side of the bluff. My heart’s starting to beat faster and I shift my feet. I remember them telling me that most people don’t go sailing off this part of the coast, there’s a cove a little farther south most people gather at to fish.

There’s something on the side of the boat. I squint, willing my eyes to make it come into focus. It’s a triangle, maybe? Or, a—

“ _FIN_ ,” Alani gasps, almost twenty years of longing and hoping in her voice. “Fin! That’s my mom! THAT’S MY MOM!” she screams, loud enough that the nearby birds take flight. The boat is sailing towards us faster than I knew boats could go; it’s carving over the waves like it belongs here. “That’s her boat! She called it “The Fin” cause in Spanish “fin” means ending but in English it’s like a fish and she thought that was funny cause she loved homonyms”—her words are running faster than my mind can even keep up, all of the joy and the pain spilling out like a waterfall— “like how “sun” in Spanish is “sol” like “soul” in English see there’s the sun right there we painted that before she left how the fuck is this boat still alive oh my god I have to get Dad _oh my god I have to get Dad_ —” Alani flings herself up the beach to a rope, which runs up the hill to a bell outside their home. There’s one on the beach, east, and another rope on the west side, so Alani can let Kaeo know if she’s home or if there’s trouble. “Hello” is one clang; “danger” is two. Alani yanks on the rope and distantly, I hear the bell go off and keep ringing. I guess “innumerable clangs” means “get down here right now.”

Kaeo comes sprinting down the hillside, because it probably seems to him like this is something significantly larger than a one-or-two bell issue. Which, to be fair, it is.

He skids to a halt next to Alani, who drops the rope and runs back to the waves. “You were right, Dad,” she says, tears wobbling her voice, but she is beaming as bright as the sun.

Kaeo stands speechless, almost awestruck as the person in the boat—Piper—Alani’s mom—drops anchor a handful of yards away and fully jumps into the water. Alani and Kaeo run out to meet her, meeting in the middle like a wave crashing. I’m crying, and Teddi is too. I didn’t think I could have this much. I didn’t think there was this much in the world. I was so closed up for so long, but now my emotions are as big as the waves at high tide.

The three of them are standing in the sea, arms intertwined like they never want to let go. But then Alani raises her head and smiles at us and waves a hand. Her face is pure elation, the most inconceivable dream here, in front of us. We splash on over, and I’m a little shy.

“Teddi.” Piper puts her hands on either side of his face.

“Yeah,” he breathes, thankfulness and utter joy exuding from every inch of him.

“Mom—” Alani stops on the word, like she never thought she’d say it again. “Mom. This is Charlie.”

“Hi.” I say, which just sounds dumb. Piper has Alani’s eyes—not just the color, but the determination, too. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

She knows what I mean, because she smiles and hugs me too, and then we’re all just one big hugging, crying mess standing in the ocean like a bunch of weirdos. I don’t even _know_ Alani’s parents. But I feel another part of myself repair, some part of me open up more, like a flower reaching for the sun.

I think about Mom and Miles. About me and Mom. About waiting. About all this time. All of the years in me and all of the years before, and now, all of the years that will come after. I used to think everything was broken. And maybe it was. Maybe it still is. But we still go on. We survive. We fix what we can.

I can’t wait to write to Mom and Miles and Aaron and Priscilla and literally everyone else I know, cause I can do that now. We have some miracle bigger than electricity, than the grid taking root across the world. We have the resolve and the sheer stubbornness to reach across unfathomable distances, to build and rebuild and keep going, to cross oceans and countries for people we love, for that simple rhythm inside that says _live_. The ocean breathes with me. Life here, more than I can hold. It’s a good thing I’m not alone, then. We all hold it. That spark, that glimmer on the water. It’s always been here. We find it in each other. I breathe in. My world breathes out, warm against my cheek and in my arms. The tiny molecules of water, turning with each revolution around the sun. Sometimes we’re big, and sometimes we’re small. All that matters is that we’re here.


	67. { ~inspiration~ in the form of music & poetry }

~

Family grows from roots  
though often  
from seeds fallen  
out of new hands, fresh  
off the shaking.  
Look at the bloom  
visible from miles off,  
blanket of color on landscape  
dull and unassuming,  
breathe the scent,  
carried across a continent  
on the backs of wind  
and storm.  
This is family,  
chosen and granted  
by wishes never made,  
indivisible  
and strong.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-  
  


{ original poem: https://www.instagram.com/p/B61_IYPlbyX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link }

~

**[ some songs for the revolution ]**

American Gods – ONR

Dog Days – Florence & the Machine

End of the World- Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors

Only You—Midnight Kids Remix

Midnight Train to Memphis—Chris Stapleton

I Won’t Give Up—Jason Mraz

Solsbury Hill—Peter Gabriel

Never Too Far Gone – Jordan Feliz

Collide – The Aftershow

The Ocean and the Sun—We The Kings

Nothing Without Love—Nate Ruess


End file.
